


Gold and Stone

by hollycomb



Series: Long Live the Fierce Machine [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Awkward Tension, Denial of Feelings, Domestic, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Relationships, Evil, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grand Marshal Armitage Hux, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Politics, Power Dynamics, Subterfuge, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:37:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 66,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: Moderation is a memory.Hux can take this in doses large enough to kill.





	1. Chapter 1

Just as under the previous regime, there are two types of meetings Hux has with the Supreme Leader. With Snoke, the meetings were either for the purpose of Snoke delivering unquestioned instructions about what to do next, these orders issued to Hux as if Snoke was speaking to any anonymous droid, or else they were meeting so Snoke could berate Hux for failing him, often when Ren was actually to blame and typically featuring some type of violence done to Hux via the Force. 

Now Hux’s meetings are either conducted in the _Finalizer_ ’s war room, on the record, in the presence of witnesses who tense up in fear whenever Hux dares to contradict Supreme Leader Ren, or else they take place in the bed he shares with Supreme Leader, while they’re both still wet with come. The latter is where Hux can truly capture and hold Ren’s attention, also where Ren’s guard dips in precious moments to embarrassingly low levels, so it is then that Hux gets more business done generally, at least in terms of goading Ren into admitting that Hux is right about something Ren pointlessly challenged him on in previous talks.

To Ren’s credit, he knows exactly what Hux is doing in these post-sex appeals to reason. His response depends more upon his mood than anything else, like everything to do with him. If he’s tired, beginning to doze while Hux’s fingers stroke through his hair, he’ll shrug one shoulder and grunt his disinterested approval. If he’s still looking to be entertained in the aftermath, he’ll play with Hux like a felinx with a cornered mouse droid, letting him think he’s making progress and then batting him back into place with a smirk. 

Hux is therefore careful about when to approach Ren with his most serious requests, but being careful can only go so far with predicting what Ren’s mood will be. It can change like a hyperspace throttle suddenly thrown, blasting them out of their post-sex reverie and into a livid argument that brings them both up onto their knees and at each other’s throats, teeth bared, not infrequently leading to more sex. 

For the discussion regarding Hux’s containment shield development, he waits until Ren seems particularly worn down and determined to be affectionate. The opportunity arises after a long day for both of them, Hux having been occupied by the cleaning up of a squashed but expensive uprising on a backwater moon called Gunter, whose supervising officer has been demoted, which itself required a tedious level of processing, all this followed by Hux’s renewed obsessive efforts to get to the bottom of Snoke’s wealth, which is such a never-ending mountain of frustration that he’s almost ready to give in and beg for Ren’s help via the Force, if it can even be useful in such practical matters. Ren has meanwhile been involved with some new drama with his Knights that he of course won’t confide in Hux about but which is visibly draining him day to day of late. 

At the start of Hux’s rest cycle, Ren is already lurking in their quarters, the air in the rooms vibrating with his exhausted agitation. Hux thinks immediately that this might be the time to bring Supreme Leader into the loop on his grandest plans at last. He’s been cautious about tipping a hint so far, afraid Ren might squash the project on a whim, or just out of spite when he’s in the wrong mood. 

But even when Ren storms forward to lift Hux off the floor and carry him into the bedroom, Hux isn’t sure this will be the occasion. He’ll know more soon, however, because Ren is already pinning him to their neatly tucked sheets and crawling onto him, diving for a kiss. 

“You were late,” Ren says, mumbling this against Hux’s mouth after he’s tongued it open. He pulls back to give Hux a pathetic look that he then tries to transform into something angrier. “You’re always late.” 

“I wasn’t aware we had an appointment,” Hux says, unwisely. He curses himself internally when he sees the pouty anger in Ren’s eyes harden into something real. Now is not time for mocking him; that’s best done after sex. Hux can’t seem to learn this lesson. “The Gunter situation is delicate,” Hux says, tossing his arms overhead. He crosses his wrists, drawing Ren’s attention to them. Ren has strange fixations when it comes to Hux’s body. “Financially delicate,” Hux says, probably more flatly than he should have. “It drove me into a fit of additional research, therefore-- I’ll tell you after. You need tending,” he says, bringing one bare hand to Ren’s cheek. He’s always careful to remove his gloves before entering their quarters, tucking them into his pocket so he can get right to work on Ren, which is often necessary. “Don’t you, hmm?”

Ren grunts at this simpering tone, employed too quickly. Hux doesn’t protest when Ren turns to suck two of his fingers into his mouth. Ren closes his teeth around them like a warning, keeping his gaze locked on Hux’s. 

This starts to make Hux hard, even as he feels himself scowling. The scowling is not a problem: Ren likes it when he scowls, Hux has noticed, especially if it’s brief and mostly confined to a displeased twitch of his nose. 

“You had Digesto biscuits for dinner,” Ren says, apparently tasting their residue on Hux’s fingertips. Or maybe he’s using the Force. 

“You object?” Hux says, tracing Ren’s lips with his wet fingers. 

“Those things barely qualify as food.” 

“They go well with my tea in that respect. How was your day?” Hux uses his dry hand to tuck Ren’s hair behind one of his big ears. Ren sees through this pretense of Hux’s concern for him, but he likes it anyway. It is, after all, an excuse to talk about himself, and Hux is his captive audience, as ever.

“Frustrating,” Ren says.

“Oh? Are you going to take it out on my arse?”

“Don’t try to be cute.” Ren catches Hux’s hand and squeezes his wrist hard, his thumb digging in against Hux’s pulse point. “It’s not a good look on you. Makes you seem desperate.”  

Hux sighs and tables the idea of bringing up his containment shield plans. So this is the mood tonight: every perceived slight met with a petulant objection. 

“Forgive me,” Hux says, breathing this onto Ren’s lips when Ren leans over him, wanting to kiss him again. Hux thinks Ren must have been denied the enormous amount of kissing he wanted as a teenager-- and no wonder, as he was certainly awkward-looking prior to the cultivation of his physique. Now he’s obsessed with the act. It’s growing on Hux in a way he never expected it to, mostly because Ren has obscenely soft, fat lips. They were the first thing Hux noticed about him when he initially spied Ren unmasked. Or the second thing, maybe, after the dramatic hair. 

“You’re thinking about my mouth,” Ren says, bumping his lower lip against Hux’s when speaks. 

“Well, it’s right there.” 

Hux braces himself to regret the smart-arsed remark, but this time Ren smiles. He brings his mouth down to Hux’s again, and it’s such a relief to not be talking, after the whole day spent in meetings and delicate conversation. Hux wraps both arms around Ren’s neck, his legs drawing up around Ren’s back. Hugging his legs around Ren always happens without Hux’s permission, his body’s automatic and seemingly unavoidable response to having Ren pressed onto him like this. It’s humiliating, and he imagines someone standing across the room and seeing his boots up in the air, his heels scrabbling against Ren’s enormous back. But it feels good, and gives him leverage to rub his erection on Ren’s hard stomach, so he keeps his legs where they are and tightens his arms around Ren’s neck, his breath quickening as Ren’s urgent kissing seems to empty his lungs of air. 

“Are you sore from this morning?” Ren asks, murmuring this into Hux’s ear. It’s a sort of taunt that makes Hux roll his hips and whine without meaning to. 

“No,” Hux says, though this isn’t technically true. He just doesn’t care. Ren is willing to do literally anything in bed, which feels like something they’ve discovered together, but Hux still likes this one thing best, maybe for the idea that he capably contains and therefore partially owns Ren’s strength while they do it. It’s a sensation of immense power, feeling Ren come undone inside him, and that’s Hux’s favorite sensation, generally.

Ren stands and pulls off his shirt. The way he stares to make sure Hux is watching him undress is almost endearing, sometimes. That Ren is actually an insecure mess of a stunted half-person is something Hux came to realize years ago, but until Ren shocked the earth out from under Hux’s feet by showing up to ‘rescue’ him from the bounty hunters who were posing as kidnappers, Hux never thought he’d be in a position to so thoroughly take advantage of this information. Still, he walks a fine line. Ren is a human disaster, but he’s not stupid, and his power in the Force is as unmatched as he likes to boast, as far as Hux can see. Hux is a shiny little amusement for Ren and nothing more thus far, like a bug with jeweled wings, clever but soft-bodied. He could be crushed in Ren’s fickle fist at any time.

Hux has to admit that this makes getting fucked by Ren that much more thrilling, especially when it’s hard and desperate like this, impatient end-of-day sex with both of them clawing at each other as if they’re still not close enough, never able to hold the other as securely as they want to. Hux takes a handful of Ren’s hair and tugs. He’s giddy and grinning when this makes Ren’s teeth drag across his exposed throat and Ren’s cock pummel into him more roughly. It’s like a warning, but it only makes Hux pull Ren’s hair again. So much of what Ren does with his body is a threat, and though Hux considers himself a strategic genius he can’t help his need to keep poking and prodding at Ren like he dares him to do whatever he’s thinking of, to just try it. As if Hux could withstand the full strength of Ren’s wrath. 

He can’t help thinking, however, sometimes, such as now, with Ren shaking in his arms and groaning through his orgasm: maybe there is one person who could take everything Ren has and just swallow it up with a smack of his lips, and maybe that person is him, Hux. 

It doesn’t seem so outlandish when he’s holding the shivering Supreme Leader in his arms, stroking his back and fisting his hair to tug him up for a messy kiss.

Ren kisses him so willingly, always, as if Hux’s mouth is holy to him. He was always telling Hux to shut up, before. Now he just does this instead. Hux prefers it, though ideally he’d rather finish his comments before Ren runs out of what little patience he has for hearing anybody else speak. 

As Ren comes back to himself, Hux schools his thoughts. He’s free to let them reel wildly when they’re fucking and just before; Ren only concentrates on what he wants when his emotions run high. He can become quite crafty in the aftermath, however, if he’s not sinking right into sleep. Sometimes he looks so closely. Hux will feel the folds of his mind shuddering as if they’re being licked at, pressed open with Ren’s signature probing. 

“You wanted something,” Ren says, studying Hux’s eyes while they lie there still connected, Ren hunched overtop him. “When you came in here.”

“Yes,” Hux says, humping up against him. “I wanted to come. And I haven’t yet. What say you, my lord. Will you indulge me?”

This _my lord_ bit achieves mixed results, and must be as delicately placed as anything else. Sometimes it enrages Ren, for reasons unknown. Sometimes he goes fucking wild for it, usually when Hux is moaning and writhing back against his mouth. 

Ren seems annoyed by it now, lips quirking. He sweeps Hux’s fringe off his forehead, never tires of disordering his hair. 

“You always want something,” Ren says, thoughtful. 

Hux has to fight hard to keep from snorting or at least rolling his eyes. 

“You know I’m greedy.” He clenches up around Ren’s softening dick to demonstrate. He does very badly need to come.

“I know exactly what you are.” 

Ren pulls free. A chill goes through Hux, from the tops of his shoulders and all the way down the backs of his legs. He thinks Ren must know about the faked kidnapping plot and at least some of why Hux did it, just as Hux knows that Ren killed Snoke and spared the girl, though he supposes the Force offers Ren more certainty. Hux can’t point to any evidence for his own tucked away information about the other’s treasonous acts. He’s just sure of it, down to his bones. 

“So what am I,” Hux asks.

It’s the wrong time to dare Ren to _try it, just try me_ , but that’s always true, and it’s never stopped Hux before. He’s lying on the bed, hard and wet between his thighs with lubricant and Ren’s leaking come. Ren is standing now, staring down at him with that threatening look. It’s strange that it doesn’t scare Hux near enough as it should, at least not anymore. It’s as if Ren is threatening some other thing that exists in the space between them, something invisible but strong. 

“You’re my good boy,” Ren says, and he beckons with two crooked fingers, stepping back from the bed. “Show me.” 

Hux doesn’t know what that means, and he doesn’t like this _good boy_ nonsense unless he’s just tipping over the edge of an orgasm. At least, he doesn’t want to like it. He can’t deny that he’s leaking anew for hearing it, the accompanying anger spreading like heat through his chest as he scoots to the end of the bed, spreads his legs around the corner of the mattress and and shows Ren his needy, straining dick. 

There’s a grin twitching at the corner of Ren’s lips. He nods to Hux’s lap. “Bring that messy little cock off for me. Let me see.” 

Hux hates him. Ren must know Hux doesn’t like performing like this, doing all the work himself while Ren stands there watching like a king, as if Hux is his modestly-endowed jester. Hux prefers being swept up and acted upon, absolved of the responsibility for his own pleasure. 

“Good,” Ren says, knowing just what effect that word will have on Hux as his fist closes around his cock. “Don’t rush. Let yourself enjoy it.” 

Hux snarls at Ren, unable to stop himself. His face is hot, and for some reason his nipples feel very obvious, too exposed for Ren’s viewing pleasure while he touches himself at a pace he supposes Ren will approve of, which is to say too slowly. 

Ren is smiling now, arms crossed over his chest. His big cock twitches and Hux moans, staring. Something about it having recently emptied into Hux and hanging heavy but almost soft is the most mouth-watering of its many appealing states of being. 

“Oh, shit,” Ren says, laughing. 

“Fuck you!” Hux sometimes forgets to guard his thoughts when he’s still hard and Ren has finished. He grits his teeth and pumps himself harder, Ren’s stupid instructions be damned. So that Ren won’t protest, he lifts both his feet off the ground and braces them on the mattress, making an obscene display of his fucked-open arse and letting his toes curl. 

Predictably, Ren is silenced by this, watching raptly. Hux throws his head back and grabs a handful of his hair, tugging it in time with his dick. 

“Ren!” he says, without meaning to, just because Ren’s attention is crawling all over him like a touch and it feels good, also fucking terrifying. Hux comes with a wince, dropping onto his back as he pumps himself through it. 

Ren falls upon him so fiercely that before Hux’s cock has even pushed out the last drops he’s reevaluating, thinking maybe this _is_ the time to bring up his most ambitious request. There’s no doubt that Ren is kissing him as if he’s impressed, tonguing at Hux like he wants to drink the taste of his name from Hux’s mouth. Hux moans into the kisses, half-regretful. He didn’t intend to cry out Ren’s name as he climaxed. That was something he was going to hold onto for use in the most desperate of occasions. Ren hasn’t even lived in his quarters for a full month yet, and already Hux has spent that precious coin. 

He can’t work up a proper disappointment in himself, however, because this feels good: Ren’s attention verging on actual admiration, his mouth sloppy and soft on Hux’s. When Ren pulls back to paw at Hux’s hair, Hux can see it there in his eyes: this was special for him, uniquely satisfying. This is a good time for talking, soft touches, humble requests. 

Not immediately, however. That would spoil it. Hux sits up on his elbows to kiss Ren’s face and lick at the stubble on his jaw. Just yesterday Ren was making fun of Hux for using old-fashioned shaving things rather than letting a droid do it. Hux dared Ren to let him shave him the traditional way, telling him it was a luxury, that it would feel good. The temptation inherent in Hux holding a blade so close to Ren’s throat got them both wound up to the point that Ren lifted Hux onto the fresher countertop and knelt between his legs to suck him off as soon as the shaving was done, possibly as a reward for not trying to kill him. As if Hux would use such an obvious ploy to do so.

Hux schools his thoughts when Ren finally relinquishes his lips and rolls off of him. For a moment Hux lies there and studies Ren, wishing that he could read Ren’s mind. There was the fragile hope, when Ren did whatever connecting procedure that allowed him to find Hux in the prison he’d designed for himself, that Hux would have a window into Ren, too. Alas, he still only has what he’s always had, an ability to read people that is peerless if he doesn’t include Force users, who cheat.

He leans onto Ren and sucks gently at his throat, over the place where Ren’s heart pounds beneath thin skin. It’s authentically intoxicating, and Hux gets so lost in it that he’s taken off guard when Ren reaches down to feel at his come-soaked hole. Hux gasps, which Ren always likes. Hux tries not to do it, despite knowing it to be a reliable Ren-appeasement technique. It’s one of those things that leaves him feeling as if he exposed something too dear, dangerously real.

“Going to clean up,” Hux says. He touches Ren’s scar, just lightly. It does give Hux a little thrill, because it represents Ren’s vulnerability, and because Ren’s eyes soften when Hux touches him there. As if he might really be grateful that he was saved. “Then I plan to make you listen to me complain about all manner of administrative concerns,” Hux says, stroking Ren’s cheek. “So don’t fall asleep.” 

“Someday you’ll learn that you can’t give me orders,” Ren says, watching Hux leave the bed. 

“I’m only informing you of my plans, Supreme Leader.” Hux grips both sides of the open fresher doorway and makes a display of himself, looking back over his shoulder to see Ren ogling his come-slick thighs. “You may of course reject them.” 

Ren has no retort. He wants to talk to Hux: it’s obvious enough that he loves it. Listening to Hux is something he’s less fond of, but he endures it for the sake of having Hux not go cold on him. It’s best when they’re both tender with each other after sex, still making critical remarks but grazing their hands over each other in a way that diffuses them. That’s when Ren will begin to mumble about his past, which he is pathetically obsessed with, or even about his recent efforts with the Knights, if he’s in a less gloomy mood. In turn, Hux makes his little requests, and sometimes his big ones, rubbing his leg up between Ren’s massive thighs while he asks for permission to run the Order anywhere but into the ground. 

It’s not ideal, but for now it’s functional, and the bonus of having such excellent sex is not without value. Hux has been especially clear-headed since all this started. Part of it is the absence of Snoke and the relative straightforwardness of Ren in comparison, but it’s also these wild fucks and this sense of complete abandon behind closed doors. He hasn’t felt this inspired in his working life since he was a desperately ambitious lieutenant, and back then he’d mostly had to thrill himself during his sexual exploits, making the most of whichever partners were advantageous. Ren is another kind of thrill. He was something Hux wanted even before it made sense to have him. 

Having washed up, Hux returns to the bedroom with a damp, soap-smeared cloth and settles beside Ren on the bed. This has become their ritual, if they don’t drop straight into sleep or arguing after sex: Ren lounging on the bed with his limbs splayed, playing the part of sated king while Hux cleans him like a servant. Hux doesn’t mind it as much as he might have thought. He was the one who invented this little routine. Ren never asks for it, but Hux always offers. There’s something about it that’s akin to the feeling Hux had as he drew that shaving razor up along the underside of Ren’s chin, his eyes locked on Ren’s as they both concentrated, careful to note every breath the other was taking. Hux can’t read Ren’s mind, but he’d felt like he could hear him wanting to say, just as Hux so often wants to: _try it, try me, see what happens_ , not even as a threat but like real encouragement, as if he was hoping Hux would at least intentionally nick his skin and then lean in to kiss the blood away, pretending at apologies. 

Hux takes his time cleaning Ren’s cock, because holding it naked and soft against his palm is not unlike dragging that blade over Ren’s skin, so close to his throat. He meets Ren’s gaze in the same way he did then, and grins when he feels Ren twitch in his hand.

“Insatiable,” Hux chides, his voice low, eyes still locked on Ren’s. It’s becoming like a nickname. 

He releases Ren’s dick and stands to put the cloth away. Predictable as ever, Ren grabs for his wrist and pulls him back into the bed before he can. The cloth drops to the floor, where Ren threw his clothes. Hux’s are scattered on the other side of the bed. He’s still not gotten used to leaving things strewn about like garbage, still hears his father’s voice and feels it like a sting on his cheek, those old rebukes for not looking after his meager possessions, for taking what he had for granted, for disrespecting proper order and the importance of leading a well-organized life. 

“Is it really so important to you?” Ren asks, pulling Hux’s leg up onto his chest and holding it there. “Is it your true ambition to be a cleaning droid? I can make that happen.” 

Hux smiles as if this is funny, relieved that Ren still only thinks he can read his mind in totality. Usually he’s just getting what’s at the surface, missing all that lurks below. 

“Here’s your last chance to complain about your day,” Hux says. He flexes his leg in Ren’s grip, rubs his thumb over Ren’s collarbones. “Because I’m about to get started on mine.” 

“Go ahead.” 

“Fine, but it will probably put you to sleep. I wonder if you want to hear my idea to prevent anything like Gunter from happening ever again.” 

“Remind me-- What happened.” 

“A small uprising, but squashing these things means we have to travel there, deploy troops, and leave additional ones stationed, and it’s a lot of work in terms of rooting out whatever rebel faction, even if they’re pathetically small, just to be sure. In this case we do make a not-insignificant amount of money from the labor of the population, because they harvest berries that wealthier types will pay a premium for, as they’re used to make drugs--”

“Don’t talk to me of berry harvests.” Ren squeezes Hux’s leg. “What’s your idea.”

“Well. The weapons they had stockpiled for their pitiful little attempt had arrived in unauthorized shipments. Troopers who are stationed there are tasked with checking all shipments, and in fact my troopers had noted excess cargo on three separate occasions, so they’re getting commended for that while their supervising officer is being demoted for ignoring the inconsistencies like the lazy fuck he is--” 

“Okay, okay. Get to the point.” 

“The point is that human error is the root of these things, always. My punishments are strict, but I can’t execute officers right now, not when we’re expanding our territory in every direction. Which is itself expensive. What would control some of this expense, after an initial investment, is an invention of mine that’s like a planet-wide scan shield.” Hux is sitting up on his elbow now, heart slamming. It sounds so unmajestic when he describes it in terms simple enough to hold Ren’s attention. “It uses tech like what we did with Starkiller, only it doesn’t need to drain the sun, just absorbs its naturally given energy via panels and uses that to power the shield. Therefore, you don’t need fuel reserves or expenditure. And I’ve taken what I learned from the Starkiller imperfection to make it so they can’t be tampered with--”

“You’re all worked up.” 

Ren is smirking. Hux drops his hands down to the mattress. He’d begun to gesture. 

“Yes, I suppose I am. Because it’s a really brilliant idea that would save us a lot of money and provide a much needed overhaul of our use of personnel resources.” 

Ren groans and drags his hands over his face. He’s only pretending to be ambivalent. Hux can tell. 

“The idea of using Starkiller tech doesn’t inspire my confidence,” Ren says, giving Hux his most impassive and therefore cruelest stare as he folds his hands behind his head. “If we’re talking about new investments. No, seems like we tried that already.”

“No, no, you’re-- You’re misunderstanding, it’s not a cannon--”

“Yeah, I got that, it’s a shield.” 

“This is only-- I only mention Starkiller because I thought you might have concerns about how we’ll be fueling these on every planet and moon we control, but all of those have suns, you see, and I’ve devised a way to power--”

“I’ll consider it. You mentioned an initial expense.” 

“Yes--” Hux buries the rage, deep. “Yes. There would be prototype testing, and of course the installations across all our territory. But once these are installed, we can recall troopers and--” 

“So have you found Snoke’s money?” Ren still has his hands folded behind his head. He’s enjoying himself, practically erect for the look of boiling irritation on Hux’s face. “Because we need to do that before building anything new. Thought we’d agreed on that, Grand Marshal.” 

“I’m perhaps close to locating, ah. Some of it.” Even this is a lie. Ren rolls his eyes. Hux feels his nose twitching-- twice, then a third time, his lip becoming involved now. “I could use some fucking help,” he blurts, before thinking better of it. “Considering you and your-- _People_ had access to Snoke that I did not. Not to mention your psychic powers.”

“Mhm.” Ren gives the barest shrug of his shoulders. “There is something I need money for, too. So perhaps it is time I get involved. Since you’re coming up empty, again and again.” 

“Right, because Snoke was so transparent! You can’t even tell me what his bloody navigators are doing aboard my ship--”

“Can’t?” Ren’s amusement rips away and he sits up, leans into Hux’s face. “Or won’t, General?”

“Now you’re demoting me?” Hux scoffs as if he doesn’t believe Ren will. He can feel the color draining from his face, giving him away. 

“Just slipped out,” Ren says, eyes cold and breath hot, near to Hux’s mouth. “Habit.” 

“Right.” 

“I’ll let the failure to find Snoke’s funds slide. Maybe I’ll even let you build your shields, once you’ve shown me a prototype. But I want something, too. And you’re going to design it for me.” 

Hux’s eyebrows go up. He feels nearly seasick from the shifting nature of this exchange, which isn’t uncommon. This bed is always on a kind of ocean: sometimes it’s so calm, Hux will lie against Ren’s chest and feel as if Ren’s heartbeat is the only sound on the entire ship. And sometimes they’re in the middle of a fucking tempest, rocking wildly on waves. 

“What would you have me design,” Hux asks, speaking slowly. “Supreme Leader.”

There are times when Hux can wield that title like a kind of insult. Trust Ren to take what would have been Hux’s ultimate life achievement that way when he’s in the wrong mood, to think he should be called something grander, or dearer.

“I’m sick of living in space,” Ren says. He leans back again, gathering pillows behind him with the Force and folding his hands over his stomach when he’s resting against them. “It’s a relic, this strategy of always being on the move. From the ex-Imperial days, a leftover mark of their failure. We’ll maintain a fleet in motion, but I need not be upon it. I want a real residence, on a planet. A fortress.”

“A palace,” Hux says, unable to suppress his sneer. 

“Call it whatever you want. I want you to design it, personally.” 

“Ren.” Hux closes his eyes, fighting the urge to feel flattered. Ren can be a masterful manipulator when he cares enough to put in the effort. Hux must keep this in mind. It’s hard to when he can’t see why Ren would bother needing to manipulate him; he can just order Hux to do whatever foolhardy thing he wants, such as now. “I’m not an architect,” Hux says, still at a loss when he looks at Ren again. Still flattered, too, in some insuppressible, childish corner of himself.

“Sure you are.” Ren frowns. “You designed Starkiller. Not just the weapon but the whole base.” 

“That’s different, that’s-- Military functionality, not some castle--”

“I want military functionality in my castle.” 

They stare at each other, Hux waiting for Ren to laugh at him for being taken in by this joke. Ren doesn’t look amused in his usual way. He has a kind of earnest entreaty in his eyes, or at least what he wants to appear as one. 

“If you do this for me,” Ren says. “I’ll allow you to protect the planet of my choice with your new shield system. Providing it works. I’ll see what I can do about finding Snoke’s hidden funds, in the meantime.” 

“Would you expect me to reside there with you,” Hux asks, trying to unwind whatever game Ren is playing now. This information is surely part of it. “In your-- Fortress. Palace. Whatever monstrosity I’m meant to make for you.”

Ren shrugs. “I expect the construction would take at least a year, and the design some time before that, plus the securing of materials, and all this after we find Snoke’s money.” He grins, shoulders flexing back. Legs spreading. “I’ll decide later.”

“Fine. Excellent. Why don’t you tell me one thing, Ren.” 

“What’s that, Hux.” 

“What about this conversation has made you hard.”

Ren’s smile widens. As far as Hux can tell, he’s experiencing authentic joy. It seems to break the surface at the strangest moments. Ren reaches down to pump himself, hitching one leg up to give Hux a better view. 

“It’s that hopeful, needy, wheedling tone in your voice,” Ren says. “And the way you let your fury eat it all up at the first sign of resistance.” 

“I’m not furious. Look at me. I’m perfectly calm.” 

“Can’t lie to me, Hux.” 

Ren’s eyes darken after he’s said so. Hux stays motionless, not even blinking. He’s never even sure if he’s been caught, because of course Ren wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing. 

“Hope you cleaned me off well,” Ren says, swirling his thumb around the tip of his cock while Hux watches. “‘Cause this is going right in your mouth.” 

“Oh, is it.”

“Yes. I’ll do you after. Don’t I always play fair?”

Hux doesn’t answer that or even hold Ren’s gaze. He crawls forward and puts his hands on Ren’s thighs, spreading them with a shove. Ren grunts and lifts his hips, humping at thin air. He liked that, apparently.

Sucking cock was something Hux used to do mechanically. It was boring at best during his rise through the ranks, usually just a distraction for some gullible superior while Hux did real work elsewhere to win promotions. They liked that he was that arsehole Brendol’s kid, that he was skinny and hapless but fiesty, that he had red hair. Whatever he could use, and he used his mouth like a tool before he learned to use it as a weapon. This despite the fact that he really does appreciate a good cock.

With Ren it’s different. Ren tastes good, even still tinged with soap from that cloth Hux used on him. He’s massive and it’s a challenge, leaving Hux’s lips and chin wet because he fills Hux’s whole mouth and then some, but the appeal is more than that. Hux can’t put his finger on it, or deny that he craves Ren’s cock like a meal. Maybe it’s just that he’s holding this most sensitive, sacred part of Ren between his teeth. He fantasized about this long before he had it, almost as often as he dreamed about making Ren kneel in front of his throne like a Force-wielding footstool. It’s not a fantasy he’s had about anyone else, and not fitting with how much he longs for Ren to crumple at his feet. He used to consider it a masochistic impulse, but now that he’s swallowing Ren’s come he’s not so sure it’s that. 

Ren follows through on his promise to return the favor. It’s true that he always does, at least in this department, probably just because he’s similarly addicted to eating Hux’s arse. Hux buries his moans in the blankets and lets his hips undulate freely. Ren likes it rough, in the sense that he appreciates needing to hold Hux’s hips still so he doesn’t break that big nose in the crack of Hux’s wriggling arse.

“No,” Hux says, turning his cheek when Ren tries to kiss his mouth afterward. Going for a post-rimming kiss on the lips seems to be Ren’s other favorite activity, though Hux has never let him actually do it. “No,” Hux says again, holding his hand against Ren’s mouth when he brings it close to Hux’s, smirking.

“I’m not,” Ren says, breathing this onto Hux like a near kiss. He’s truly a child, unwilling to stop playing with his favorite toy even after two orgasms. “Don’t see what the problem is, though. You sucked me after I’d been in you.” 

“After I’d cleaned you. Go wash out your mouth if you want it so much.” 

Hux fears he shouldn’t have said that: it’s not smart to point out what Ren loves to do to him most, because they’re supposed to pretend they don’t love any of this. Or something. Hux is tired, and Ren is sighing in his ear rather than getting up to clean his mouth.

“Did I make any noise in my sleep last night?” Ren asks, muttering this question like he’s ashamed of it. 

“I don’t think so.” Hux turns his face toward Ren’s, frowning. He holds his fingertips over Ren’s lips when Ren again moves within kissing distance. “Why?”

“No reason.” 

Hux supposes this has something to do with what Ren has lately been brooding about after meetings with his Knights. Hux has thought about approaching one of the Knights himself for a chat, if they would even speak to him. He’s thought in passing that they seem interested in him, too, in some intangible way. They’re about the ship wherever they please, sometimes just loitering menacingly. Hux wants desperately to see what’s under those masks, though he’s not sure why it matters. Sometimes it stings when Ren goes to them without giving Hux a reason, as if they’re still co-commanders and Hux can demand to be informed of their doings. 

“Are your Knights adapting well to ship-bound life?” he asks.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Ren asks, as if that’s an answer to Hux’s question. For all Hux knows about the Knights, maybe it is. 

“Fuck no,” Hux says, shuddering against Ren’s side at the thought of his dead father coming back in even the most translucent form, bent on vengeance. Then he thinks of his mother, differently. “Why?”

Ren of course doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the ceiling, breathing a little harder. 

“They’re real,” he finally says, and perhaps this is a response to Hux’s question, though it doesn’t seem like one. “But only for us.”

“Us?”

“Force users.”

“Oh.” Hux rolls his eyes. “Well, you can keep them. I’ve no interest.”

“There’s no one you’d want to talk to who died.” 

Ren says this as if he knows it’s not true. Hux rolls off of him and consults the ceiling. 

“Phasma,” Hux says, offhand. He was sorry to hear that she’d died, both times. 

Ren snorts. “That psychopath? She didn’t respect you. To put it kindly. And Starkiller was her fault.” 

“How so?” Hux asks, turning to scowl at him. “And what would you-- You make a habit of going round checking on who respects me or not?” He’s been wanting to ask about Peavey, actually, but Ren would get too much pleasure out of the inquiry and would probably lie and say no, even if the answer is yes. Though Hux really knows it’s not yes, anyway. 

“Starkiller was my fault, too,” Ren says, which would be shocking if he didn’t sound so indifferent and guiltless. “And yours. Maybe if I reviewed your designs for future projects, I could catch these little things you miss. Human error, as you say, can be costly.” 

“Right, and perhaps I should have caught you before you ran out to dash your lightsaber through a ghost like a frothing idiot-- Oh, wait. I did try.” 

Ren is quiet for a while, gaze still pointed at the ceiling. His lips are pressed together, eyes narrowed. 

_Come on_ , Hux thinks, up on his elbow and glowering down at him. _You wanted a fight, come and get one_. 

It’s absurd, both because Ren could crush him with flick of his hand and because they’re still pressed together in places, Hux’s knee digging into Ren’s thigh. It’s all absurd, and with Ren it always will be, even when one of them kills the other. Hux will be laughing, he’s sure, even if he’s the one with a mouthful of blood.

“He wasn’t a ghost,” Ren says. The way his tone goes suddenly mild is eerie at times like this, when Hux is on guard and waiting for him to explode. “Not then. I told you.”

“Did you? I found your explanation somewhat lacking.” 

“It’s like how I found you.” Ren turns toward him, and Hux realizes too late that he’s stepped on thin ice. “When you were kidnapped.” 

“Ah. Well, I’m sure it’s beyond my comprehension--”

“Could you feel me?” Ren asks, rolling toward Hux and sitting up on his elbow in one swift motion that makes Hux’s flinch. “When I sought you, through the Force. Before I appeared to you in that cell.” 

Even the way he says _cell_ makes it obvious that he knows. Hux can only wonder how long it took him to catch on. In those early days Ren had seemed to suspect nothing; Hux had been careful to actually stay in that cell even when he had no expectation of being found by Ren or anyone else. When he came back he needed to look authentically starved, actually beaten and worn down. So that no one would suspect. He wasn’t as careful as he should have been to pretend to be traumatized, as he’s never been allowed to display outward signs of that, and he was too giddy with the boon of Ren’s sudden interest in him to hide the spring in his step. It had felt like so much good fortune after all the recent struggle, disappointment, disgrace. Hux has to remind himself, right now, how much more severely he could suffer if this even bigger gamble than the kidnapping plot doesn’t play out the way he hopes it will. 

He’s rubbing Ren’s bicep, trying to distract from this thought process by remembering his gratitude and relief when Ren showed up in the flesh at last. That was real, though more complicated than Ren knew. 

“I didn’t feel anything until you appeared,” Hux says. “And then it was like-- Like being fed, and having my rib heal by a fraction. I told you that.”

“Yes. You did tell me.” 

Ren takes Hux’s left hand and curls his fingers inward before bringing them to his mouth for a kiss. He pointedly kisses the finger that was broken. Hux had worried that a mere finger breaking and cracked rib would seem too tame, but he didn’t want to dare anything more grisly. Something as delicate as wrist bones can heal improperly even when treated with top of the line bacta. Hux thinks of this as he watches Ren move down to kiss his palm, his wrist. 

“It’s like that,” Ren says, mild again. “What Skywalker did. Sending yourself elsewhere even as your body remains in another place. He sent himself so far, for so long, that it killed him.” 

“And now he’s a ghost?” Hux asks, trying to follow. “A real one?”

Ren’s grip on Hux’s wrist tightens. “He’d like to be one. I feel a presence in my dreams. A watchful thing. It feels like him.” 

Hux recoils. “That sounds horrible.”

“It’s good, actually,” Ren says, and then doesn’t elaborate. He releases Hux’s hand and rests his head down, eyes closed. His jaw is shifting, brow creased. He’s far from sleep. 

Hux decides to make a move. He kisses Ren’s nose, strokes his hair. Skywalker is a sensitive subject that can either set Ren off or leave him wanting any comfort Hux offers, desperate for it.

“I have an idea, my lord,” Hux says, waiting to see if Ren will hate this fake title or swoon into it.

“What,” is Ren’s only response, his eyes still closed. 

“Might the navigators help lead us to the source of Snoke’s wealth?”

Ren’s eyes fly open, bright with rage. 

“You know nothing of the Force,” he says, so bitterly that Hux moves backward. “To ask them, beings such as that, about something as trifling, as filthy as _credits_? No. That’s a sacrilege. I forbid you from even the pretense of advising me in matters of the Force. It’s grotesque to think that you could--”

“All right!” Hux shouts, sitting up and moving further from him. “Forgive me for not seeing credits as filthy. They’ve always been pretty fucking important on my end.”

“Precisely.” 

Ren rolls over and punches his pillow. Hux stands from the bed with as much restraint as he can manage, wanting to throw something at Ren or have a further tirade about how the revolting realities of wealth and the lack thereof have shaped his life and will continue to do so until he dies. He exits the room with a cold, shattered thing turning over and over inside him, scraping at his chest from the inside and leaving ice in the gashes it makes there. 

Ren claims he can feel Hux’s pain, ha. Hux wishes that were true, though he knows he shouldn’t. Pain is private. He guards his as best he can.

He pours himself a drink out in the front room, hunched against his wall-mounted bar like the glow from its shelves is a source of heat. Elbows resting on the lowest shelf, he snarls at his reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. He should be glad for every one of these outbursts. They mean Ren is unhinged, and that he’ll always be alone, isolated and therefore vulnerable. Why not share a bed with one of his Knights, to spare himself the inconvenience of Hux’s lack of understanding of the Force? Ren must repulse them, too. Surely they’re better at hiding their disgust than Hux, with their mind powers and having known him longer, and so forth.

Hux pours himself a bit more and decides he’s going to seek one of them out. Let Ren rage at him for it if that makes him feel better. He’s clearly not ready to murder Hux for every annoyance, even for the most egregious ones in his myopic, impossible to comprehend view. Hux needs more leverage, needs to cast a wider net for whatever knowledge he can acquire. Those other Force users could potentially be valuable allies. Hux has made bolder moves in the past, and at least one of the Knights must hate Ren as much as Hux does for his ironically visionless tyranny. 

_Yes, and maybe one of those other masked mystics will be nicer to you_ , Brendol’s not-actual ghost says in Hux’s head, laughing at him. 

_Weakling_.

Hux hears Ren moving about in the bedroom and hurries to finish his drink. Ren doesn’t need the stuff, of course. He sneers at it, same as the sleep stims. Hux has abandoned the stims since Ren’s arrival in his bed. The sex and the constant whatever else they do to each other is enough to wear him out every night now. He sleeps like a stone most of the time, still without dreams. 

He’s so often naked in these rooms now that he barely realized he was leaving the bedroom without putting on any clothes. He feels cold and awkward when Ren walks up behind him, certainly aware that Hux was out here throwing back brandy. Hux keeps his back to Ren and looks into the mirror behind the bar shelves to glower at his silhouette, waiting to hear about how Supreme Leader disapproves of drinking. Maybe Hux will get a fucking spanking. 

Ren has something-- A blanket. No, Hux’s robe. It’s black, floor length, and Ren has made fun of it for its resemblance to Hux’s greatcoat in both structure and fabric, though it’s not quite that heavy or oversized. Ren holds it open and walks up behind Hux, drapes it over his shoulders.

“If I ordered something from the kitchens,” Ren says, “Would you eat it?”

Hux isn’t speechless or even very surprised. This is how Ren operates. Attack, regret, repeat. It’s not as if Hux expected anything else when he got himself into this. He feared something much worse, in fact, and still here he is. Waiting it out.

“Why do you bother?” Hux asks anyway, holding Ren’s gaze in the mirror across the middle shelf, between two bottles. 

“With what.”

Hux just stares at him.

“The Force bond--”

“No,” Hux says, having expected that. “Enough. Do this or don’t, but don’t feed me that shit.” 

“Do-- What?” Ren narrows his eyes. “You sound drunk. You need real food.”

“What do you know about being drunk.”

“My father.”

“Oh? Mine too. Look at that, finally something we have in common. Order food, I don’t give a fuck. Do whatever you want.”

Hux hears himself beginning to sound like Ren: testy, emotional, a brat who thinks he can get away with this because he’s wounded and because he should be felt sorry for.

It’s rather enjoyable, two drinks in. 

Ren holds Hux’s gaze in their reflection. He brings his face close and presses his cheek to Hux’s, puts his hands on Hux’s shoulders.

“I killed mine, too,” Ren says. 

“Sorry?”

“My father. Same as you.” 

“ _When_?” Hux asks, eyes bulging.

Ren smiles. It doesn’t make any sense that he would, but the sight of Ren’s rare, genuine smile, now of all times, pulls a kind of disbelieving laugh out of Hux. 

“I’ll tell you,” Ren says. He’s back to that oddly light and yet menacing tone. “Over dinner.”

This is how Hux ends up seated at their dining table in his robe, twirling buttery cheetroot noodles around his fork while Ren sits across from him in his underwear and uses his hands to pick the meat from a bowl of steamed clams, sucking the sauce that’s poured over them from his fingertips between muttered revelations about the apparently late Han Solo. He was on Starkiller, Ren says, with the other terrorists who compose Ren’s ex-family and friends. Snoke wanted Ren to kill him as a kind of test. Ren did. 

Hux listens in watchful silence and cleans his plate, hungrier than he realized. He wonders if Ren knows that eating all that shellfish will make his come taste foul. Possibly he does and this is some kind of taunt, Ren making Hux watch him eat all these clams while dreading the outcome, though Hux also suspects at times that Ren has never actually fucked anyone but him and that he’s clueless about these more nuanced matters even after all the fucking they’ve done in recent weeks. 

“How about yours?” Ren asks. 

“Mine?”

“Your father. How’d that play out.” 

“Oh.” Hux scrapes at the noodle remnants on his plate. “Well, Phasma did it, actually. We coordinated it together. Apparently that meant nothing about her respect for me, or so you say.”

“She was an empty person,” Ren says. He’s picking through clam shells, looking for stray meat. The sauce has dripped all over the table. “She didn’t care about anyone or anything, only her own survival.” 

“Isn’t that your thing?”

“My what?” Ren looks up and meets Hux’s eyes sharply, with warning. Don’t spoil this, he’s saying. Wherever Ren moves the line, Hux is expected to keep walking it. 

“I suppose you care about your Knights,” Hux says, abandoning whatever point he was trying to make. “Will I ever meet them?”

“You have met them.”

“Not properly. I think they’re curious about me. I sort of-- Feel it, when I’ve passed them in the halls. The same way I feel things from you.”

“What do you feel from me?”

“What _don’t_ I feel, from you.” Hux meant that as a sort of joke, some vague sexual innuendo. He senses it’s fallen flat, but Ren doesn’t seem angry, just lost, searching Hux’s face. “Anyway, I want to know them,” Hux says, turning his gaze back to his plate. “The Knights. I think they’re interesting.” This confession may go a long way. Ren likes it when Hux is curious about his mystical dealings, to a point. As long as he acts deferential and clueless about it. “And I think they find me interesting, too.” 

“Of course they do. You’re bonded to me.” 

Now Hux is the one who feels lost. He watches Ren rise from the table and finally use his cloth napkin, wiping his mouth with it, then his chest. Hux will be the one who orders a droid in here to clean up after their meal, of course. He supposes he should be pleased that Ren at least figured out how to order food himself. 

Ren is showering when Hux makes his way into the bedroom, having thrown back another quick swallow of brandy after calling for the cleaning droid. It will arrive in the morning, after Hux is back on duty and Ren is wherever he pleases. Hux doesn’t keep a personal droid even for simple tasks like clearing plates. He did when he was younger, and even found the company of droids somewhat comforting, but once he ascended to General he got paranoid about how droids can be tampered with and began to keep his stock of service droids outside of his private rooms. He checks the ones who clean his rooms routinely for monitoring equipment or any other signs of interference. At times he’s thought it might be more efficient to just do his own chores, but the luxury of not having to is too appealing, after so many years of doing everything himself because Brendol thought children should work hard to build character and not rely on droids. 

Hux doesn’t rely on anyone. That was the real lesson Brendol taught him, the only one. He goes into the bedroom and pulls on his sweater, which is his non-verbal signal that he’s done with sex for the time being. Ren doesn’t like the sweater. Hux is all the more fond of it therefore. 

For a while he watches the fresher door, waiting for Ren to emerge. His eyelids grow heavy and he yawns against his pillow, full and well-fucked, pleasantly tired. Just where Ren wants him, probably. Or certainly. The missing bit of this equation is why Ren bothers with comforts. Whatever he wants from Hux is already his for the taking.

Hux lets his eyes fall shut and rolls over, turning his back to the fresher. Sinking closer to sleep, he allows himself to indulge his most dangerous suspicion: that Ren sought him through the Force and came to that cell to retrieve him because he wants Hux to be some kind of real ally, not just a slave to his whims. Ren might think he wants that, at times. At other times it’s clear he wants both, and that he thinks he can have both, then remembers it’s one or the other. Hux drags the blankets up higher, over his ear. He doesn’t want to be thinking this way. Whatever Ren’s game is, Hux can’t buy into his measured use of affection on any level. Even if it’s fleetingly genuine. Or especially then. 

Ren gets into bed behind Hux and wakes him partially, smelling of soap and dragging himself across the mattress, toward Hux. He has this ritual now of tucking himself around Hux’s back and clamping his arm tightly across Hux’s chest, as if to lock him in place until morning. Hux doesn’t mind it, because Ren is very warm, and because as long as Ren keeps this close, Hux knows exactly where he is, too. He wraps his hand around Ren’s wrist and holds it like it’s the handle of blaster, his thumb pressing over the trigger point of Ren’s pulse, as if Ren’s body is his weapon, too. 

 

**

Returning to work after leaving his quarters now often feels like emerging from some erotic hallucination and back into reality. Hux wouldn’t describe what transpires there with Ren as a nightmare, nor as a dream. It’s more like something he’s experiencing while awake and yet unable to perceive as true when it’s no longer there in front of his eyes. Did he just eat an awkward meal while Supreme Leader Ren described his experience with patricide and inquired mildly about Hux’s own? Did he then fall asleep with the beast at his back, and did he wake up with Ren’s enormous hand pressed against his belly? Who can really say.

All Hux knows is that there is work to be done, and when he’s back in uniform this is all that seems to matter. He considers their discussion in bed a tacit permission to begin arranging for a prototype of his containment shield tech, and he delegates two administrative meetings to Peavey so he can lock himself in his office and work on perfecting his design for the entire first half of the cycle, only looking up occasionally to check his comm messages. He’s determined to make this design unassailable if Ren truly intends to review it. 

Around mid-shift his stomach is growling, which is odd. He normally doesn’t have an appetite during the work hours, but did skip his liquified breakfast after eating just before bed the night before. He needs to put in an appearance on the bridge anyway, so he stops by the officers’ mess to see what they’re serving and smile tightly at those who look at him with honored surprise, not accustomed to having the Grand Marshal in their dining area.  

“Ah, Peavey,” he says, pretending to be glad to see him at the round table in the middle of the room, sitting among others of his generation. They all start to stand as Hux approaches, but he does them the courtesy of holding out his hand, allowing them to fall back onto their arses. “How did it go with the Glindarii?” 

“Acceptably, sir,” Peavey says, standing. “They insisted upon negotiating the price of the--”

“No, no, sit,” Hux says, nodding to Peavey’s meal tray. He enjoys interrupting him, also condescending to him, though generally they get along. Peavey was a colleague of Brendol’s, so he’s accustomed to be condescended to by a Hux. “I’m going to fetch a tray of my own. You can give me your report once I’ve joined you.” 

“Very good, sir.”

Peavey is obviously taken off guard by this gesture. Hux wasn’t big on circulating socially among his officers even before Crait, and since then he’s been somewhat reclusive outside of his on-duty presence. This is Ren’s fault, of course, and Hux knows exactly what they’re muttering about at that table while he collects his food. Let them. Hux learned long ago to meet sordid speculation with feigned obliviousness, as if he believes everyone has the utmost confidence in him. Better to catch them off guard that way. 

He’s the youngest person at the table by at least ten years, his closest peer a Captain named Botts who is in her mid-forties. She was a protégé of Canady’s, so Hux assumes she’s imagining his head on on a pike when she smiles tightly at him. 

Hux actually liked Canady, and personally promoted him to that Dreadnought. Of course, his handing out promotions to his elders was and is interpreted as condescension regardless. The young officers still admire Hux and are generally on his side, particularly the subadults who find the ex-Imperials scary and remote. Those people are the Order’s future, not these crusty, resentful old fucks. Hux reminds himself of this while trying to keep his expression as placid as possible whenever he catches one of them looking at him as if they’ve recently been picturing him on his knees between Ren’s legs.

“Now then,” Hux says, when the stiff pleasantries have been dispensed with. “You were saying, Peavey, something about price negotiations. I don’t like those going on without my input, but of course it happens if the other party is determined. I trust you didn’t agree to anything contractually.” 

“Of course not, sir, and we left them with the impression that there will be no lowering in the going rate they were paying for our resources from Gunter. There was no damage to the crop, and they know that. They’re being opportunistic because of the news, but we were firm.” 

“Excellent. Any other developments in the situation that I need to be aware of?”

“None, sir, except that I got the estimated cost for the repairs to the bridge to our main encampment. I’ve sent them to your comm--”

“Yes, I saw those.” Hux stabs at his lunch, some kind of goopy salad with chopped vegetables and chitnuts. He wasn’t really thinking when he asked for it, too distracted by his awareness that he was being discussed at the officers’ table. “Bridges,” he mutters. 

“What’s that, sir?” Peavey says, leaning closer.

“Nothing. Just-- We’re nearing a time in our history when superior technology will eliminate the need for such mundane repairs.” Hux smiles tightly at Peavey, then Botts. The look on her face reminds him that he should look into her recent communications with Olivi Canady when he’s next in his office. Canady is currently in the brig on the _Empowerment_ , swearing she was under the influence of mood stims when she threatened the Grand Marshal’s life. Her medbay records do reflect they were prescribed for ‘persisting grief.’ Hux plans to release her relatively soon, under close supervision. 

When he stands to leave they all begin to rise again, uncertainly now. This time he lets them. 

He feels smaller as he walks from the mess even so, like the frail boy some at that table once knew him to be. He’s seen to it that everyone who personally saw Brendol strike and berate him are either dead or stationed in backwaters, but some of them must have heard, they must talk about it even now--

Once he has a new victory under his belt he won’t allow himself to obsess over this anymore. He goes to the bridge and spends some time among the young staff there, spirits lifting with every interaction. They’re interested in his prototype development, eyes glowing with pleasure when he suggests he might need their help with a forthcoming project. Hux finds himself wishing Ren were here to see this. It’s so important: these people are the Order’s future. Some of them surely have entertained or dreamed of schemes to overthrow anyone who stands in their way someday, Hux included, but he can’t fault them that, and isn’t worried as long as he’s got Ren’s boots on the floor beside his at the end of the day, at the end of their bed. 

While talking with a baby-faced junior officer about far space transmissions that Hux suspects were solicited by the navigators, he imagines one of the more attractive youngsters thinking he or she might someday seduce the Supreme Leader in the same way they assume Hux has. He has to suppress inappropriate laughter at the thought, and again when the junior officer’s face lights up because he thinks Hux’s sudden smile means the Grand Marshal particularly likes what he just said. 

Good luck to anyone else who tries this dive toward madness that has to be expertly balanced, perfectly timed. Hux imagines being a ghost and laughing his translucent head off at some new upstart’s efforts with Ren, who would be able to see and not banish Hux’s malevolent spirit while the young seducer pouted in confusion at Ren’s snarling at thin air. 

It shouldn’t be funny, maybe, but it is. 

By the end of his on-shift hours Hux feels energized, both by his time on the bridge and the forward momentum of his containment shield plans. The ambitious young officers he spoke to understand the brilliance of the theory behind it in a way that Ren of course did not. Hux didn’t divulge any specifics about the mechanism or its power source; it’s too early for that. He spoke more of the principal ideas behind it, which are obviously sound. He’s humming with optimism when he’s back in his peaceful, presently Ren-free quarters, and he decides to indulge in a shower with hot water rather than the sonic. He’s noticed that Ren never showers in anything but. 

Hux’s hand has just wandered down to his cock when Ren appears as if summoned, stepping into the shower behind him like this is another appointment Hux forgot that they made. Hux doesn’t mind, would rather get fucked than jerk off. He wouldn’t object to being kissed, either, since he’s in an indulgent mood. 

Ren glues himself to Hux’s back before he can turn for a kiss or anything else, hugging his arms around Hux’s chest and burying his face against Hux’s shoulder. He squeezes Hux close and breathes against him in choppy exhales, hands sliding across Hux’s wet skin. His dick is soft, even when Hux wiggles his arse back against it hopefully. 

“What’s wrong?” Hux asks, because he can’t think of any clever way to couch this question delicately. He was in a good mood. For once. So of course Ren is doing whatever this is.

“Nothing,” Ren says, gruff and combative, despite this posture that suggests naked defeat. 

Hux stands there waiting for a real explanation, increasingly angry that he’s being made to ask for one while Ren remains wrapped around him like a rathtar. 

Ren says nothing. If he’s getting something out of this, and it seems that he is, because it’s going on endlessly, it doesn’t require Hux to speak or move from this position that Ren has locked him into. Ren’s cock is still not even a little hard against Hux’s arse. 

“I guess we’re just standing here wasting time, then,” Hux says. “I can’t even reach my soap.” 

Ren remains motionless, but the bottle of foaming scrub moves, levitating from its shelf and hovering in front of Hux, within reach. It’s the first Force maneuver Ren has done since choking Hux onto his knees that hasn’t seemed like some kind of threat, but still Hux gets a shiver of unease when he reaches out and grasps the bottle. He’s actually already washed himself, so he just stands there holding it, sighing. 

“I found it,” Ren finally says, squeezing Hux even tighter, his face still pressed to Hux’s skin. 

“Snoke’s money?” Hux says, perking up. 

“Yes.” Ren lifts his head. His hands slide down to Hux’s waist. “How did you know.”

“Ah, because that’s what you were looking for?”

Hux turns to Ren, beaming. He can’t help it. What a triumphant day, if Ren is telling the truth! Ren of course looks like he wants to die, but maybe Hux should have expected that.

“Are you sure?” Hux asks. He sweeps Ren’s damp hair back and presses against him, waiting to hear the accompanying bad news that has put this broken look on Ren’s face.

Ren nods. “Not all of it, but a significant source. We meditated upon this today. It wasn’t difficult.”

“So what’s the source? Where is it?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“I’ll see? Surely we’re not both going to retrieve it.”

“Why not.”

“One of us has to stay behind and, you know, run everything? Lead, and so forth?”

“No. I need you. You’re coming.” 

“Need me?” Hux is annoyed before he’s stunned. Then he’s almost pleased, conditionally. “For what, political wheedling? Ren, just tell me what the hell is going on, for once. Please.”

“It’s on a planet. In the Yurc quadrant. I’ve been there before. It’s a bad place. For me.”

“How so? What’s the planet called?”

“It hasn’t got a name. You wouldn’t know it, anyway.”

Hux can’t even put his finger on what about that statement is most irritating. He sighs and squeezes Ren’s biceps. Now is clearly not the time to ask for details. He’ll pull down some of these barriers with sex first, then question Ren more gently. It’s worked before.

“Both of us being away from the ship at once might not be wise right now,” Hux says, his hands sliding up to knead Ren’s shoulders. 

“It’s fine. It’ll be fine. You’re coming.” 

“What will you require of me on this planet, Supreme Leader?”

Ren doesn’t answer. He’s making a face like Hux just threw up on his chest. 

“You hypocrite,” Ren says. 

“What?” Hux rips his hands away from Ren and tries to step back, but Ren catches him by the waist and holds him close. 

“Telling me last night not to feed you shit. And yet you expect me to lap yours up.”

“Are you not the Supreme Leader?” Hux asks, understanding Ren’s meaning with a kind of simultaneous icy horror and relieved swoon. 

“I am, and you will do as I say without questioning me. My Knights will be here to oversee things while we’re away.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant, great idea. Incidentally, also a recipe for mutiny, giving the command bridge to some masked strangers my officers have never met--”

“I didn’t say I’d give them the bridge! I only mean they’ll be here to keep a watch on things from a distance and report anything amiss to me via the Force. I thought you would be happy about this.”

“I am! Or I would be, if you’d tell me anything. Why has it got to be some mystery?” 

“It can be hard to explain things to you.”

“To me, particularly,” Hux says, doubtful. 

“Yes. I’ve asked one of my Knights to assist.” 

“Assist in what, this mission?”

“Several of them will, but I was talking about assistance with you, beforehand.” 

Hux just stares, his mind going to strange places. He’s legitimately afraid to ask.

“She will meet with you in the concourse gardens tomorrow morning. She’s the most patient and wise of all my Knights, and has a way with people.” 

“A way with-- You’re outsourcing a simple explanation to one of your servants?”

“It’s not simple, and you’ll understand when you meet with her!” Ren says, roaring this at Hux such that his voice seems to bounce around with them inside the shower stall, trapped. “How can you stand this water,” he asks, glaring at the controls. Hux feels the temperature dip. “It’s scalding.” 

“It’s just hot, you know-- How I am.” 

“Yes, I do know.” 

Ren wants to wield this information like a threat, but Hux is too thrilled by the prospect of an actual meeting with one of the Knights to care much about his menacing stares. The same goes for the recovery of Snoke’s riches, though the vagueness of Ren’s plan to secure them has Hux concerned that it’s not going to be as easy as finding a hidden room full of piles of treasure. 

“You’re still not hard,” Hux says, insulted. 

“It’s been a long day.”

“Seems so. All right, turn around. Put your hands against the wall.”

Ren is caught off guard, his expression not quite confused but not purely curious. Hux has learned that Ren appreciates anything that even approaches a real surprise, especially if Hux is the one offering it up. It’s how Hux got all of this started to begin with, his heart pounding in his throat after he’d answered Ren’s ridiculous speech about a Force bond with a proposal that they just fuck it out. He’s pretty sure Ren didn’t know then what the real surprise was, that he had come to the seeming rescue of someone who was trying to plant the seed for a coup. 

“Go on,” Hux says, hands going to Ren’s hips, prodding him to turn. “I’ll take care of you.” 

There’s still some hesitation, but Ren is too curious about what Hux is doing to resist. He thinks he knows, and he’s right. Ren is getting a little hard, at last, just for the idea. Hux has been hard since Ren wrapped around him, as irritating as his refusal to do anything more was.

Hux doesn’t normally enjoy having his fingers up anyone’s arse, including his own, but they’re in the shower, where they now keep a dedicated bottle of lubricant, and beginning this as if he’s cleaning Ren up for it has a particular appeal. He also loves the way the muscles in Ren’s back ripple when he grunts and shifts into the pleasure of being touched like this, and the way his arse clamps needfully around one finger, then two. Ren’s big hands on the shower wall have Hux transfixed: with every crook or slide of his fingers Hux can control Ren’s, making them curl and then straighten with angry determination, scrabbling for traction while Hux takes him apart from within. 

“Touch yourself,” Hux says, disliking how breathless he’s become. Before Ren, he never got this hard just for acting upon someone else. 

“Keep going,” Ren growls when he grabs his dick, because he needs to give an order, to pretend he’s always in control. Hux is grinning, fucking into him shallow but quick with two fingers. 

“Ah, there,” Hux says, sealing himself to Ren’s back while still digging into him, rubbing and pressing at that spot while Ren goes so tense, his mouth wide open but no sound coming from him just now. “Mhmm?” Hux says, mouth to Ren’s ear. “There, yes?”

“Yes!” Ren shouts, teeth grit, as if he’s actually angry about Hux’s certainty and not grinding his hips back to feel more of what Hux is doing to him. Ren punches the shower wall so hard that, if it were plastitile, like the walls of the showers Hux knew at the Academy, it would have cracked. 

When Ren comes it’s with a long groan that Hux wants to lick up and digest. He tries, leaning forward to lap at the corner of Ren’s open mouth. Ren seems equally determined to feed this dying sound to Hux, craning his neck to try to kiss it into him while Hux still has him pinned to the shower wall, his fingers slipping from Ren’s arse. This disconnection elicits a different sound from Ren, a muffled little overwhelmed thing that makes Hux lap at Ren’s cheek like a maniac. It’s a habit he’s picked up from Ren, who licks everything, even Hux’s sideburns. 

“Let me clean up,” Hux protests when Ren whirls on him, still breathless but obviously determined to return the favor like it’s a volley in some game they’re playing, because of course it is. 

Ren doesn’t give Hux leave to clean his hand. He holds Hux against him and reaches down for Hux’s arse while they’re face to face, staring into Hux’s eyes as if to say: here’s a braver way to do this to another person, coward. The lubricant levitates from the shelf where Hux left it, into Ren’s hand. 

Hux melts onto Ren’s chest for the first squirming finger between his cheeks, groans openly for its insistent inward push. Let Ren see all of it: Hux isn’t in the mood to deny him, and pleasing Ren will earn Hux more answers than not. Admittedly, Hux can hardly remember which answers he wants when Ren finds his prostate and gives it a series of short, slow strokes that have Hux humping against him already, crying out. 

He tips his head up for a kiss when he comes against Ren’s stomach, letting Ren see this, too: that he wants to taste Ren while he’s emptying himself. Ren obliges, of course. He always obliges Hux this one thing. Hux is still drifting and lets it go on for a while, huffing his breath against Ren’s lips and blinking his eyes open, bonelessly surrendered even after Ren’s finger slides free. For a few seconds, with Ren’s nose pressed to his, Ren’s wet eyelashes on his forehead, it’s a real thing, this resignation to weakness in Ren’s arms, and it’s nice for just as long, only a few seconds. 

“Let me wash my hand,” Hux says, pulling away. With his back to Ren, he adjusts the water temperature, making it hot enough for his liking again. 

“Are you going to thank me?” Ren asks, dragging one knuckle down along the length of Hux’s spine while he cleans his hands. 

“For bringing me off? Sure, thanks.” 

“For finding the payload.” Ren’s voice has changed: warning, careful. “One, anyway.” 

“I thought you said it was easy.” Hux can’t help himself. He should be sweeter, more agreeable, because he wants something and only Ren can give it: an explanation, information. He takes Ren’s hand and cleans it, too, holding Ren’s gaze while he does. 

“Everything’s easy for me,” Ren says, eyes dark. “Isn’t that what you believe.” 

“No.” 

Hux was on Crait, after all. Not to mention Starkiller. He doesn’t need to say so, and doesn’t know why he feels a thrill of victory when Ren senses him thinking of both failures. Ren’s left eye twitches, the usual signal that precedes a rage. Hux should be placating him. He should be careful, even now. Always. He knows Ren can see the gleeful defiance in his eyes, the thing that says _come on, come on. Anyone could lie down for you. You know this is the me you want_. 

Hux isn’t even sure he’s right about this. He supposes he just wants to be.

“Are you hungry,” Ren asks. He’s still menacing, threatening Hux with his measured pretense of calm. 

“Starved,” Hux says. “My lunch was dismal.”

They order a meal and eat together, same as the night before: Hux in his robe, Ren in his underwear. Hux asks a few questions, but he’s ruined his chance to get Ren to cooperate. Ren is all grunts and suspicious stares. At least he’s opted for utensils tonight, tearing at a bantha steak like he thinks Hux will be impressed or intimidated by the sight of his sawing knife and grinding teeth.

“What time is this meeting tomorrow?” Hux asks when he’s given up on getting any more complex questions answered. “With your Knight, in the garden--”

“She’ll be there at 09:00.” 

Hux fumes, but it’s minor. “I’ll have to cancel an officers’ meeting.” 

“How tragic.” 

Since they’ve both already had their shower, there’s no excuse to break apart before one joins the other in bed. Hux cleans his teeth, puts on his sweater and drags his comm into the bed. There’s a pending request for Olivi Canady’s release from the brig on the _Empowerment_. Hux sighs and grants it. 

“If someone really tried to kill me,” he says, attempting to sound bored as he continues to page through his messages, “Would you know, and stop them?”

“Haven’t I already.”

Ah, the kidnapping. Hux wasn’t paying enough attention. He keeps giving Ren opportunities to dangle that over his head like an ignited lightsaber. Hux has considered that Ren just wants him to confess, and to detail what he thought the ideal outcome would be, but what would be the fun in that. 

“Oh, yes, _thank you_.” Hux pronounces this with exaggerated enthusiasm, so it will be obvious that he’s being sarcastic. To prevent Ren from having a resulting tantrum, he leans over to kiss Ren’s cheek, then his mouth. “Thank you,” he says again, looking Ren in the eyes this time. Accidentally meaning it this time, too. 

It really was the shock of Hux’s life that Ren cared at all, enough to use the Force to find him and then to show up in person, to hoist Hux off that floor he’d pitched himself onto. At the bottom of all of this, probably even unknown to Ren himself, Ren seems to want Hux as some kind of conditional, carefully managed friend. 

Hux intends to ask this Knight if he’s right about any of this. He won’t expect a straight answer and suspects she’s complicit in whatever maze Ren is always trying to keep Hux running through, but he’s good at eking out the little glints of information that live between that which he’s given, even when Force users are involved.

Maybe especially then, in fact.

 

**

For the first time in as long as he can remember, Hux has dreams. They worry him, but when he wakes from them, at least three times during the night, he can’t remember much. In one of them he’s sure he encountered the navigators, but not because of any specific image that lingers with him, just an impression of having been in the company of ghosts. 

Ren doesn’t stir when Hux wakes. He’s a mountain of warmth and noisy breathing. Twice Hux has dared to touch the massive wound on Ren’s side while he sleeps, feather-light but daring, watching Ren’s face and almost wanting him to wake in a rage for the transgression. Hux asked Ren if the girl gave it to him, as it was bleeding everywhere when Hux found Ren in the snow after she’d bested him. Ren said no. Hux believes him, though he’s not sure why and has no idea who else might have left this healed-over crater in Ren’s side that day. He doesn’t think it was Ren’s father. Hux knows about the kinds of wounds fathers inflict. This doesn’t feel like one of those.

When the drone of his alarm wakes him for his shift, Ren is gone. Hux once didn’t need an alarm. He reliably rose in time to make it to the bridge early even if he’d stimmed himself only three hours before. Now he requires this programmed prodding from his comm on its charge stand, and even after being dredged from sleep he sits in bed for a moment, groggy. They didn’t have any particularly elaborate sex the night before, so he can only attribute this grogginess to the dreams he can’t remember, which bothers him. He thinks, resentfully, that they’re something Ren has passed onto him, like a virus. Ren seems to sleep well now, free of them. 

Drinks are not allowed in the concourse gardens or in any of the walled-off recreational areas that contain live flora, but Hux is the Grand Marshal and can do what he likes. This is perhaps an attitude of Ren’s that has also rubbed off on him like some communicable disease, but since he had to condense his duties to accommodate this meeting he didn’t have time to take his tarine service in his office. He prepares it himself, to stave off assassination attempts, the locked box he keeps his leaves in keyed to his fingerprint. He’s sipping from an insulated mug as he strolls through the garden, craning his neck to try and spot a waiting Knight. This garden has otherwise been closed off for maintenance according to Hux’s orders, so that they won’t be disturbed. 

He senses her before he sees her. It’s like a soft breeze, and for a moment he thinks it’s a genius touch installed by the garden’s engineers, part of the artificial landscape that’s been enhanced since he last made a trip here. The breeze seems to envelop him and he moves into it, some instinctual self-preservation impulse that never leaves him causing him to cover the mug of tea with his hand. The garden is winding and spacious, the nicest of their rec areas, and Hux is approaching the back corner as he closes in on this sensation of a breeze that he’s realized by now isn’t one, not really. It’s her, calling to him. She’s calling him with Ren’s name, tugging on the thing that Ren says connects them. Hux feels it more concretely than he has in weeks, pulled forward in her grip. 

The back corner of the garden is the most austere but also the most lovely, in Hux’s opinion. Each segment is styled after a planet that most senior officers in the Order come from. This one is Jarlen, which Hux only visited once in his tour as a lieutenant. It’s a culture that favors spare expressions of beauty set among empty space, clean lines and carefully manicured plant life. At the center of the rock garden that Hux considers his favorite section of the garden, between red-leafed trees that fan out like lace overhead, stands a Knight in full uniform, if what they wear can be called that. She’s got her mask on, gloved hands folded in front of her, feet apart over the neatly raked pebbles that surround the boulders behind her. The weapon on her belt is some odd, rectangular thing that looks like a compact shoulder cannon. Hux remembers noticing it when she arrived. 

“That’s a bitter drink to favor,” she says in accented Basic. Hux hasn’t heard this voice before. There’s no vocoder, only a kind of graceful concealment behind the mask.

“This?” Hux says inelegantly, looking down into his cup. He understands now what Ren meant about this Knight having a way with people. He can feel her energy sinking into his already, trying to draw him out. He can feel himself wanting her to do it, too, as if he might reach into his own chest and open his ribs to give her a better view. Of course Ren would want the best invader of minds to be the one who meets with Hux. “Would you take off your mask?” he asks, looking up from his tea. 

He doesn’t expect her to agree, was really only asking to try to fight against whatever spell she’s working on him, but she grants this request without hesitation, reaching for her helmet. Hers is shinier than the others, a glossy blackish silver. Hux remembers noticing that, too, when she arrived. 

She’s beautiful in a way that Hux finds jarring, maybe because she’s close to human but not quite there. Or maybe it’s that she has red hair, a richer and more luminous shade than his own, threaded with gold. Fallen loose from her helmet, it hangs just to her shoulders and in two short braids behind her ears. 

“Do you have some Vahla blood?” she asks. It’s a joke: she’s smiling a little, mostly in her glittering eyes. They’re almost black but not quite, a kind of shifting obsidian. 

“I doubt it,” Hux says, stepping closer. “Thank you for meeting with me. Ren seems to think you’re going to explain about Snoke’s wealth and how we’re going to get it, or why I’ve got to go with him, or both? He wasn’t very clear on any of it.” 

“He talks like he fights. Strikes fast and then teases circles around his target.”

“Well, you’re right to characterize me as someone he sees as prey. I guess you know my name, but what should I call you?”

“Wyn.” 

“Wyn Ren?” Hux regrets the look on his face. His cheeks have been burning since he saw her hair color. He’s not even sure why. 

“That’s how humans pronounce my name. I’ve given up trying to correct them. Your tongues aren’t as flexible as ours, so it’s a lost cause.” 

This makes Hux’s face flush brighter, and again when he considers that she and the other Knights certainly know what he’s gotten up to with Ren in recent weeks. 

Wyn steps closer and examines Hux properly, head tilting. Every aspect of her has a kind of luminosity that makes Hux feel transfixed by cold power: her coppery skin seems to glow, and that sensation of a cool breeze moving around him is stronger as she closes in on him. 

“How have you ensnared him like this?” she asks. “With no real power?” 

“Him-- Ren?” 

“There’s a bond, I’m sure he’s told you. He created it, but you did something to force his hand.”

“No-- I.” If Hux does confess to the kidnapping plot, it won’t be to her, however much she winds her way into his mind. He remembers his methods for keeping Snoke and Ren out of there and employs them: focusing on his physical surroundings and genuflecting mentally to how small he feels in the presence of a power that reaches so deeply through everything it observes. “It’s just to do with sex,” Hux blurts. “Can’t you see that? I think-- Was Ren, uh. Inexperienced, before me?”

He’s resisted the urge to confess to his plot, but now this other shit has blathered its way out.

Wyn smiles and presses her shoulders back. A kind of humming pressure seems to release around Hux, and he gulps from his tea to hide his burning face. 

“I can feel you prying me open,” he says when she just stands there like she’s seeing all of him from a judgmental distance. “I should have expected as much. An interrogation rather than a conversation. Or a dissection, I should say.” 

“I’m not dissecting you, Armitage. He asked me to answer your questions.”

“I’ve got thousands.” 

“Yes. I won’t answer all of them.” 

Hux considers reiterating the one about Ren’s previous sexual experience or lack thereof and how that factors into Ren’s fascination with what they’ve been doing to each other and with Hux therefore. He decides better of it and squares his shoulders the same way she has.

“What’s this mission to recover Snoke’s riches?” Hux asks. “And why won’t he tell me about it himself?”

“He wants you to experience it organically.” She breaks eye contact with Hux for the first time since removing her helmet, her gaze drifting off toward the neighboring segment of the garden. It’s a much frillier one with pastel flowers whose petals occasionally drift into the other areas. “We had a bad experience in this place,” she says when she returns her gaze to Hux’s. “After our friend was murdered by Snoke. Kylo suspects that our finding Snoke’s wealth there is a trap laid for us by Snoke long ago.”

“So naturally he wants me to venture into the trap with him,” Hux says, spitting this out without thinking. 

“He fears he won’t be strong enough to defeat whatever awaits us there without the other half of his Force bond close at hand.” 

This is a much franker admission than Hux expected, so it must itself be a kind of trap, a misdirection. He can feel Wyn sensing his suspicion and doesn’t like the way she smiles. 

“Regardless, you will join us,” she says. “We have all foreseen it.”

“Oh?” Hux is repulsed by this, being told what he will do and that it cannot be changed. “What else might you have foreseen?”

“Not much that can be relied upon. Trusting visions through the Force of the far off future is dangerous. They can be influenced by many things that are not the truth, or which represent shifting truths, always moving around us.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Hux wilts when he hears himself being so disrespectful. It wasn’t his plan: he’d wanted to make a kind of friend, even shallowly. “Will you come along on this mission that might be a trap?” he asks. 

“Yes. Myself and one other Knight. It will be hard for us, especially for Kylo. He blames himself for the death of our friend. Rightly.” 

Hux’s eyebrows go up. Her face remains impassive. She doesn’t blink, he notices. Her eyelashes are long, perched over her eyes like antenna that are gathering another level of information. They’re a lovely dark red, very unlike his own pale ones. He’s always disliked his coloring. It makes it much harder to be anonymous at the right times, when he needs the eyes of others to skim over him.   

“So I’m meant to hold Ren’s hand during this mission to acquire Snoke’s riches?” Hux asks. “Because he’ll be upset?”

“Yes,” Wyn says.

Hux waits for more, or for that joking glint of amusement to surface again in her eyes. She seems serious, however. 

“In truth, I don’t understand why he needs you,” she says. “I don’t experience this sort of attachment.” 

“What sort.”

“Romantic.” 

“The word you’re wanting is sexual,” Hux says, nose twitching. “I mean-- Sex, we. We’re talking about fucking, right?”

“That, too.” 

“What--” 

“You make a strange kind of sense,” Wyn says. She lifts her helmet, still watching Hux while she lowers it over her head. 

“In what way?” Hux asks, afraid of the answer.

“I’ll leave that for you to discover.”

“You’re going already?” Hux asks when she moves past him. “I have more questions about this upcoming caper, not to mention other matters.” 

“Yes, I know.” She turns back, tucking the ends of her hair into her high-necked tunic. “As you might have guessed, I was really sent here by my master to read you for signs of forthcoming betrayal. In venturing to this place where our bad memories live he will be newly vulnerable to you. He asked me to tell him if he can trust you or not, beforehand.” 

“And?” Hux sputters, heart slamming. There’s got to be a hidden truth in this seeming admission, too. “What did you find?”

“Do you really not know yourself?”

She turns to go, leaving him with that. 

Hux doesn’t know what she sensed about him or what she’ll report to Ren. He refuses to think of it as a lack of knowledge about himself or his own intentions. He simply hasn’t worked out how best to leverage what little footing he’s regained since Snoke’s murder. All he’s known since Ren’s Force-assisted rescue mission flipped his initial strategy onto its head is that he needs to keep Ren close, and he suspects that Ren knows only that much about him. Both of them surely plan to be rid of the other eventually. Whether or not this could be interpreted as a bent toward betrayal, at this stage, Hux isn’t sure.

He’s on edge for the rest of his work day, watching every corridor for Ren or one of his Knights. None of them appears, and when Hux returns to their quarters, with trepidation, two hours after he’s off shift, Ren is absent. 

At first, this doesn’t seem so unusual or alarming. Ren keeps odd hours and abandons what passes for their routine as he likes. Hux tries not to make anything of it in his imagination, but by the time he’s showered and ordered some food he’s envisioned ten different ways Wyn might have broken the news to Ren: he’s using you, he sees every comfort you offer him as a sign of your weakness, he scoffs at the idea that you might lead, he covets your title and your throne.

None of it is untrue. Hux sits in his sweater on the bed and tries to focus on his comm, his eyes blurring over. He’s tired but restless, and he wants a drink but doesn’t dare even a sip. He’ll need to have all his wits about him when Ren blows through the door. Enough time has passed now without so much as a hint of Ren checking up on him through the Force: something has gone wrong. The meeting with the Knight was a fool’s gambit, an arrogant mistake. She looked into Hux, saw things. He felt it happening and still didn’t brace himself thoroughly enough for what her report to Ren would yield. 

He can’t sleep even when he puts the lights down and curls up alone under the blankets, wearing his sweater. He stripped his briefs off before getting into bed, thinking an emergency flash of his arse might save his life if Ren came in here planning to execute him for the crime of imagining the vague possibility of a future betrayal. 

And yet that’s not precisely what he fears: if he really thought Ren was coming here to kill him he wouldn’t lie around half-naked, waiting for it. He’s waiting for something else, and his sense of it is not good, but not murderous. He groans and tosses onto his back, rolls onto his side, turns over and punches at his pillow, trying to reshape it into something that will help him rest. 

Nothing works, and by the time he hears Ren enter he hasn’t managed even a thin interlude of semi-sleep. He considers pretending to be asleep as Ren approaches the bedroom, but that would be idiotic. Ren can read his mind. 

“There you are,” Hux says, sitting up as Ren comes into the doorway, a silent silhouette. “What time is it? Where have you been?” 

These are non-strategic questions. They’re also evidence that, while he hasn’t been sleeping, Hux has been in a state of semi-conscious haziness for hours. He’s off his game, vulnerable. 

“I was making preparations to leave,” Ren says. He’s holding something, hugging it to his chest. “Now I’m ready. I brought your supplies.” He steps forward to show Hux what he’s got: a stack of folded clothing and a pair of boots. “Put these on,” Ren says, and he drops them onto the bed. “We’re going now.” 

“What-- Where?”

“To the planet with Snoke’s cache of riches. There’s no need to move the fleet.” Ren is heading into the fresher, cape swirling behind him. “We’ll take a shuttle. Our absence should be discreet.” 

“Yes-- I agree, and as I’ve had no time to make my own preparations--” 

“I’ve already done all that’s necessary. Get dressed, hurry.” 

Hux wants to protest: he’s tired, he’s not ready, and Ren couldn’t possibly know, and certainly doesn’t care, what needs to be done before Hux spends time away from the fleet. He pulls off his sweater and watches Ren in the fresher: he’s anxious, pulling things out of drawers and piling them on the counter, then going to the sink to splash water on his face. He stares at himself in the mirror without reaching for a towel, water dripping from his chin. Hux feels caught when Ren turns to look at him.

“Get dressed!” Ren barks. “That’s an order, Marshal.” 

Ren likes to call him by only half his title when he’s annoyed, like a warning. Hux scowls but pulls on the thin undershirt that Ren provided with the rest of the clothing, which looks like some anonymous adventurer’s outfit. Hux supposes that’s the idea. 

“I met your friend,” Hux says, as if Ren doesn’t know and hasn’t consulted with her about the exchange in the concourse garden. “Wyn. She has red hair.” 

Ren says nothing. He grabs a handful of basic toiletries and carries them out of the room. 

Hux follows him out once he’s dressed: the pants are tighter than he’d like and the boots are a bit fussy, with too many needless buckles, but otherwise he thinks this disguise might actually suit him. He’s still delirious from not having really slept and from grinding teeth together for hours with dread that Ren was off somewhere contemplating how to handle the news that Hux might betray him someday. Now that seems like a foolish thing to have wasted time worrying about. Of course Ren knew that already, before Wyn’s consultation. He was only having her make sure that Hux didn’t have any imminent plans to knife him in his sleep. 

Ren has a bag packed, presumably the same one he stuffed their toiletries into. He’s standing near the door, looking Hux over. 

“You’re bringing your blaster,” Ren says, glancing at the occupied holster on Hux’s belt.

Hux scoffs. “Of course. I never leave our quarters without it, let alone the ship.” He wonders if he should mention that Wyn told him they might be walking into a trap. 

“It’s unnecessary,” Ren says. “When you’re in my company.” 

“Right, well. I feel better having it.”

“Fine. But leave that.” Ren nods again to Hux’s belt, this time at the comm that Hux tucked into his waistband. 

“I’ve got to stay in touch with the ship,” Hux says, much more bothered by this request. 

“No. In fact you must not be in contact with anyone. Our task requires a complete lack of interference. Leave it.”

Hux wants to fight him on this, hand resting protectively over his comm. It’s more of a potential weapon than a blaster could ever be, if Ren is his rival. The comm represents all his connections to the world that Ren might reign over but doesn’t entirely control. 

Ren gives Hux a long look, studying him. Hux thinks there might be something admiring in it, also something suspicious. The usual combination. Hux sighs and turns to put his comm on the dining table. Ren looks pleased when Hux turns to him again. Which is not a good sign, nor comforting.

“Follow me,” Ren says. He shoulders the bag and turns for the door. 

Two Knights are waiting for them in the empty command shuttle bay, even the monitoring station’s officers sent away. Hux supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is irritated. These people can’t just do what they like outside of protocol, or anyway they shouldn’t be able to. Hux can feel their attention on him as he approaches with Ren: one of the Knights is Wyn, and the other is the one Hux has gathered must be the Twi’lek, because he wears a hood with long front panels that would conceal lekku, and none of the others have anything but high collars. So Ren has invited the two non-human Knights on this field trip. Interesting, probably intentional in order to prove some kind of point to Hux, and therefore annoying. 

“You’ve met Wyn,” Ren says, pointing to her. He points to the presumed Twi’lek. “This is Ilar.” 

“Armitage Hux,” Hux says flatly in the direction of Ilar, whose face is entirely concealed beneath the hood. Hux feels like he’s dreaming, wonders if he should offer his hand. “Grand Marshal of the--” 

“They know who you are,” Ren snaps. He grabs Hux’s shoulder and guides him into the shuttle with an insistent push. “Let’s get going.” 

The shuttle is discreet in the sense that it’s basic and uncomfortably small. Hux sits in the co-pilot’s seat without thinking, knowing that Ren won’t pass up the opportunity to fly something himself, even this uninspired crate. He waits for Ren to tell him to get up, to make way for one of the Knights, but Ren must really need him close. He takes the pilot seat without objecting to Hux’s proximity. Ren is clearly tense, leaning over the controls and glowering at the viewport even after they’ve jumped to hyperspace with an impatient jolt that is characteristic of Ren’s piloting style. 

“What’s this planet like?” Hux asks when the silence begins to bother him. He wonders if the Knights are conversing with Ren in silence, through the Force, but he thinks he would feel it if they were. He felt it before, when they arrived, but couldn’t make out what was being said beyond a few stray words in Basic. 

“It’s misty,” Ren says. “Damp.” 

Hux supposes this is why the jacket Ren gave him has a hood. He pulls it up over his hair in an effort to match his mostly concealed company, though his clothing is in brown and tan tones rather than their black and silver. Of course Ren wouldn’t deign to offer anything resembling real belonging, Force bond or not. 

“How long will we be need to be planetside?” Hux asks, worries about what’s going on back on the ship already creeping in. It’s of course possible that this is Ren’s way of getting rid of him, just a ruse to separate him from his officers and have the Knights get their hands dirty with Hux’s execution while Ren stands back watching, maybe wistful but knowing he made the smart move. 

“Not long,” Ren says. He gives Hux a significant look, eyes narrowing, and Hux is sure that Ren has sensed his dull wondering about this potentially being a death march. Hux isn’t sure why this makes him grin. Ren scowls properly, disapproving of Hux’s amusement. 

_I’m not afraid_ , Hux thinks, in wonderment and also so that Ren might hear this through their connection and understand it. 

Ren looks away from him, jaw shifting. 

Coming out of hyperspace rocks the shuttle even harder than leaping into it did. Hux grabs both arms of the co-pilot’s chair and feels something in Ren jolt, too, as if he was disturbed by Hux’s discomfort. They look at each other, both curious. The connection feels too strong, suddenly. Maybe it’s the presence of the Knights sitting behind them, or Ren’s anxiety about going to this place. Hux squirms in his seat when he realizes that whatever is pulling him toward Ren’s energy is also making him think of sex, to the point that his cock twitches hopefully in his too-tight pants. He wishes Ren hadn’t taken so long getting ready only to spring their departure on him without warning. They might have taken a moment to fuck before boarding the shuttle. It wouldn’t have taken long, and would have burned off some nervous energy for both of them.

Hux is watching the grey clouds swirling on the planet below as they approach, feeling Ren in his mind and hovering around him, hearing his thoughts. 

_I wouldn’t have been able to get it up_ , Ren sends back, possibly without meaning to. 

_Shh_ , Hux replies, glaring at him. _Won’t they hear?_ He tips his head toward the Knights. 

Ren glowers at the viewport. 

_I don’t keep anything from them_. 

Right, Hux thinks, not directing this at Ren but knowing that he’ll hear it. So where were they for the past five years, if your close-knit little cult really shares everything? 

Ren doesn’t answer. He’s staring intently at the planet as they get closer, the shuttle shaking throughout their atmo entry. 

“Master,” Ilar says, this sudden interjection into the silence startling Hux, “Shall I explain our objective to your bond-mate now?”

“Don’t call him that,” Ren says, still staring at the viewport. “And no. We’ll wait until we’re on the planet’s surface. I’ll make a camp where we can meditate on our approach while he sleeps.” 

“While who sleeps?” Hux asks. It has become hard to hold his eyes open, the co-pilot’s chair just comfortable enough to make him slump and yawn. 

“You,” Ren says, cutting him a look. “Your exhaustion is draining my concentration.” 

“So sorry, sir.” _And none of that exhaustion is yours? When did you last sleep?_

 _I won’t sleep until this is done_ , Ren responds. There’s something desperate in it, a begging thing. Hux nods to himself and drops the subject. Ren is far more anxious than tired, and it’s not unwise for him to give up on the idea of sleep until he’s dealt with the thing that’s grinding at him. Hux has made similar decisions when necessary. 

Something in him tilts toward Ren. He has the urge to touch Ren’s arm for no reason, without any real motive, and if the others weren’t here he would have done it already. Instead he pulls the hood of his jacket around his head more snugly, as if he can hide from this sympathetic tug in his gut. 

The planet they land on is indeed misty, but it’s not the depressing murk that Hux pictured. This mist is silverish and light, landing on his cheeks with a pleasant dusting of dampness when he tips his face up toward the gray sky. He’s surprised that this place doesn’t feel threatening or foreboding or anything like what he’d imagined when Wyn spoke to him of it as a place where Snoke might have long ago laid a trap. But this would be the precise kind of trap Snoke would set: he liked fine things, and the whisper of welcome on the air here is likely part of some design to make visitors let their guard down. 

Without speaking, Ren walks toward a narrow passageway between the towering rock formations that they landed beside. The rock is a grayish purple, same as the slick stone ground. The mist moves through the rocks like a beckoning presence. Hux hurries his steps and keeps close to Ren while Wyn and Ilar march dutifully behind them. 

“We’ll make camp here,” Ren says when they haven’t walked very far. There’s a shelf of rock overhead providing shelter from the persisting mist, which has thickened amongst the walls of rock that form a maze-like canyon. Ilar and Wyn immediately set to work, tossing back their capes to reveal camping equipment strapped to their sides. 

The camp they construct is distressingly basic. Hux doesn’t mind simple operations when necessary, but having not been briefed on what to expect from this planet’s terrain or wildlife, he finds the canvas tent and single bag of supplies lacking on an unprofessional scale. The bag is the same one Ren hastily packed in their quarters after throwing a handful of clothes at Hux. There is no food or fresh water within it, so far as Hux can see. 

“Take the tent,” Ren says, gesturing to it. “We need to gather further information from the energy of this place before moving forward.” 

“Yes, you said that.” Hux fights the urge to yawn. He’s not normally so worn down by a single night without real sleep. It’s got to be Ren’s fault somehow, his weariness contributing to Hux’s own on an uneven scale, stealing his resources. “I suppose this is some sort of advanced meditation,” Hux says, eying Ilar and Wyn. He wonders if they will take off their helmets. He’s never been so close to a Twi’lek before. They were not well thought of in Arkanian society, but Hux has never put much stock in what Arkanians think. Brendol was a valued member of the community there. Hux’s mother was a joke, meanwhile. 

“Get out of the damp,” Ren says, ushering Hux toward the tent. “I’ll wake you when we’re ready to proceed.” 

“It’s absurd to land on a planet only to go directly to sleep.” 

“Yes, I agree. I assumed you would rest during your off cycle, but instead you fixated on my absence, and now you are a liability to me through the bond, whereas I brought you here only to serve my mission. Get in the tent and sleep.” 

Hux isn’t sure why he should be embarrassed to have endured this tirade in front of the Knights, who stand there masked and silent but clearly watchful. It’s not as if they are Hux’s officers, in whose presence Ren has also derided Hux. Still, it stings, and he wants to stand his ground but has no recourse. Of course Ren has dragged him here without his comm or any open plans, deliberately unsteadying him and then barking at him for being unsteadied. Ren probably only intends to look strong in front of his Knights, using Hux for this purpose just as he uses him for everything. 

Hux goes into the tent hating him, fuming, far from sleep. He wonders why Ren didn’t just stim him and dump him on the thin sleep roll within. 

No, he knows why: because that would make sense, and none of what Ren does can ever do that. 

Inside the tent, Hux puts his back to the flap so he can pretend to sleep. He listens intently, but of course Ren doesn’t need to speak to his Knights in a way that Hux can hear. Something seems to be drifting below the surface of Hux’s consciousness, meanwhile, more faintly than it was when Ren first reunited with his Knights and Hux could feel him conversing with them without being able to make out words. He could sense their moods, at least, even when the Knights stood as stoic as empty armor and Ren stared back at them with feigned impassive confidence. Some of the Knights were so ready to relent to Ren’s command. Others less so. These two Ren has brought along were the most glad to be returned to him. He must have sensed the same things. 

The mood now is cautious, or at least that’s what Hux thinks he can sense through his own simmering rage at being talked to like a child who tried to cheat his way out of bedtime. It makes him even angrier to realize that he had been hoping, without thinking about it specifically, that the Knights would like and respect him. He’s never cared before about any mystic’s opinion of him, not even Snoke’s, outside of needing to stay in line to avoid being executed. He certainly doesn’t care about Ren’s. Why it should burn him to be made to look small in front of some masked aliens who’ve devoted their lives to serving Ren is beyond him. He decides he doesn’t care; let them underestimate him just as Ren does. Whatever Wyn told Ren after reading Hux’s mind in the garden is not the whole truth. Hux would be speared by Ren’s lightsaber already if she could see straight through to the center of him. There’s no loyalty to Ren there. Not a shred. 

He falls asleep angry and grimacing and wakes up with a headache. The light of the planet’s mellow sun has disappeared, and there’s an additional shadow looming over him within the tent.

It’s Ren, of course, staring at him ponderously. His hair is wet, which is unflattering. Hux feels disoriented but not particularly alarmed. He can smell a fire. 

“You were so tired you managed to sleep even while snarling,” Ren says. 

“Oh, did you watch me the whole time?” Hux pushes Ren’s hand away, not even sure what he was reaching for. “This is your fault, isn’t it?” he says, sitting up. “I’m usually able to fight off exhaustion for days if I need to.” 

“It’s possible that the two of us both avoiding sleep increases the effect of weariness. I may have sourced some energy from the bond. From you. I’m the one who needs to be alert.”

“Why bring me at all then? I could be back on the ship, resting properly, not to mention doing my job--” 

“Did Wyn not explain.” 

“For one definition of explain. The same one you favor, vague and shifting and contradictory. Not sure why her telling me as opposed to you made any difference.” 

“How was she vague? The bond is like a set of mag cuffs that keeps our energies locked together. The task ahead of me in this place is significant. If you were back on the ship, I would be pulled thin by the distance between us. Compromised.” 

Hux is too tired to list the many ways this is impossibly inane or to even accuse Ren of not having thought before he leapt when he engendered this thing in the first place. It’s likely saving Hux’s life day by day, if any of what Ren says is true, but there’s still the matter of Ren having made this bond in the first place. That came from something else. It was Ren’s choice, whatever Wyn says. Hux only forced Ren’s hand by not being there when Ren wanted him.

“Fine,” Hux says, tightly. “I’m here where you want me, and now I’ve slept. Just tell me what to do next. I won’t pretend you care to have my input.” 

“Come and sit by the fire.” Ren turns away after saying so, either pretending to miss Hux’s indignance or indifferent to it. “We have things to tell you.” 

Hux is too intrigued by the invitation to sit with Ren and his Knights to be properly suspicious. It also doesn’t help that he feels strangely well-rested after having slept on a bed roll on hard ground, on an unfamiliar, unnamed planet. He supposes Ren might have done something to him. That’s true more often than not.

Outside the tent, the mist continues to glaze down over the landscape. The overhang of rock that they’ve camped beneath protects them from the full receipt of this moisture, but it’s floating in the air, and Hux feels his skin dampen as if kissed when he looks out in the darkness, not sure what he’s trying to spot. Ren takes his shoulder and guides him back with an inscrutable look, nudging him toward the fire that Wyn and Ilar are sitting beside. 

Hux startles when he sees that they’re both unmasked. He didn’t even look at them when emerging from the tent, drawn to the mist and the echoing canyon walls instead of his typically silent, faceless companions. They’re not cooking anything over their fire, which has a strange redness that Hux attributes to something in the air here before he considers that they might have thrown magic dust onto the flames or some damned thing. He sits down on a shelf of rock opposite from them, wondering if he’s been bewitched into thinking that an invitation to sit with Force users is some kind of honor and not just a new danger to navigate carefully. His blaster is at his hip, but without his officers and his army he might as well be weaponless. 

“You should know about this place before we move forward,” Ilar says, speaking to Hux. 

Hux can’t even pretend not to stare. He expected teeth sharpened to points, but maybe that’s only a myth about male Twi’leks, or against the Jedi code, or something. Ilar’s eyes are more human-like than Hux expected, too, but everything else about him is so foreign, and so close, that Hux can’t access his usual ability to shield his thoughts from a curious Force user. Ilar is studying him, too. Hux can feel it. When Ren sits beside him on the shelf of rock, Hux moves closer without really meaning to. Ilar’s lekku look so heavy. They seem like they might serve as weapons themselves. Hux eyes the massive sword strapped to Ilar’s back, curious again about why it seems to be the only one of the Knights’ weapons that doesn’t have a glowing kyber component. Perhaps it’s concealed until he’s doing battle.

“So are you telling me what this place is?” Hux asks, fidgeting. “Or not? I’m listening.”

“You have a mind that is noisy within itself,” Ilar says. He’s giving Hux a patient stare that seems suspect and makes Hux wish he was wearing his greatcoat or some other armor-like attire. “You were not really ready to listen until you spoke.” 

“Fine. Granted.” Hux resists the urge to rolls his eyes, remembering how he regretted his snappish tone with Wyn in the garden. He can’t help himself. This mystical slowness of pace makes him irritable. 

“This planet is where Snoke first sent us as a group,” Ilar says. “After we had named ourselves the Knights.” 

“Yes, Wyn told me. And--” Hux glances at Ren before continuing. He’s staring at the fire, shoulders curled up toward his ears. 

“And I told you about Duro,” Wyn says. 

“About what?”

“Duro,” Ren says. He flinches when Hux looks at him again. “That was his name.” 

“Our friend,” Ilar says. “From Skywalker’s school. Our brother.” 

“You need not get into that part,” Ren says sharply, looking up at him.

Ilar nods. “All that’s relevant now is that we were grieving him when we came here. Snoke meant that as a kind of test. To see if we could use the pain and anger to fuel our power in combat.” 

“And did you?” Hux asks when an awkward silence descends, Ilar’s gaze drifting somewhere past his left shoulder. 

“We slaughtered people here,” Wyn says. She sounds angry, and when she looks at Hux he sees Starkiller-- or feels it, like a knife between his ribs. Like a weapon she’s thrown at him. “The native population. They were dwindling already, because of Snoke. He ordered us to finish them off.”

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Ilar says, giving her a sidelong look. 

“You regret it?” Hux says, surprised. He doesn’t regret Starkiller. The thought that it might _not_ have fired before it was destroyed still keeps him up at night. 

“Wyn’s people were hunted to near extinction by the Jedi,” Ren says. “Because of their use of the dark side. The Jedi feared its power, always have. They stopped at nothing to remain the only wielders of power in the galaxy.” 

“Destruction of competition is natural,” Wyn says. Hux can still feel her anger in his chest like a fire she started, smouldering there. It feels like the color red: not like her hair, or his, but like Starkiller’s glow. “The people here were not competition to Snoke,” she says. “I don’t value fairness. It’s not real, just a fantasy. But the people who lived here had a stake, a home, and Snoke took it. This feeds my anger now.”

Hux is confused. He projects it outward and shifts so that his shoulder bumps Ren’s, wishing they could just converse in their minds, unheard. 

“Am I going to be informed of the source of Snoke’s wealth at any point?” Hux asks. “I understand that he killed whoever owned it before him, I expected as much. That was his style. He consumed things. What exactly are we recovering here?” 

“A deposit of raw materials,” Ilar says. He speaks in a measured way, as if warning the other two not to answer. “You feel them even now. Any living thing would.”  

“I feel something,” Hux says, and there’s an uneasiness in acknowledging that he doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t have the language to describe it. He doesn’t like not having an answer when quizzed. “It’s a kind of energy, I suppose.” 

“Right.” Ilar’s eyes light the way that a satisfied professor’s might, and Hux can’t help feeling pleased with himself for giving an acceptable if vague answer. “It is an energy from under the earth here. You might view it as a kind of mine.” 

“Snoke did,” Ren says, and he stands. “Let’s go. There’s no more reason to delay.” 

“Well, what is this stuff?” Hux asks, and he stands when Wyn and Ilar do, with the same prompt attention to their commanding officer. “In the mine, I mean. The raw material.” 

“Kyber crystal,” Wyn says. “Perhaps the largest deposit in the known galaxy.” 

“That stuff’s extremely valuable,” Hux says. He knows his eyes have widened, and that Wyn and Ilar must see the massive flow of credits he’s imagining piling up in them. “We used it in Starkiller, and it took years to accumulate enough to power my design.” Hux turns to Ren, frowning. “If Snoke had a huge deposit all along, why--” 

“Starkiller was your project, not Snoke’s.” Ren is avoiding Hux’s eyes, adjusting his gloves. “What you did find was provided by him.” 

“Slowly!” 

“He had reasons for pacing your project the way he did. We’re going to the stronghold now. You’ll stay back while we clear out the guards.” 

“Guards?” Hux says, picturing the ones from Snoke’s throne room, allegedly slaughtered by that slight young girl who allegedly killed Snoke first. 

Ren nods to indicate that these guards are the same type, droid-like servants of Snoke in red armor. The confirmation hits Hux like a mental image shared between the two of them, and he can see that the clarity and ease of this understanding has jarred Ren, too. Away from the ship, they feel especially connected. Hux finds himself walking too close to Ren as they set off for the narrow passageway ahead through the canyon, Wyn and Ilar hurrying to catch up after they’ve efficiently packed up the tent and put out the fire. 

“How many of them will there be?” Hux asks, following behind Ren through dark, narrow passageways in the cliffs that tower around them. 

“I don’t know,” Ren says. His tone indicates that he doesn’t want more questions. Hux is tempted to defy him just because, but out of some kind of odd respect for the Knights following behind him, which he still can’t explain to himself, he keeps quiet, as if he’s one of Ren’s obedient soldiers, too. 

The canyon walls end abruptly, depositing them onto a long stretch of field that’s empty of flora, cut into by hundreds of shallow pools of water that glisten with a kind of menace beneath the pale light of the planet’s largest moon. Ren halts and observes them while Hux watches his face. Wyn and Ilar come to stand at their sides. Both are wearing their helmets now, but neither has drawn their weapon. 

“This water cannot be disturbed,” Ren says, speaking to Hux. “And maneuvering past the pools without stumbling into one is too difficult for someone who can’t use the Force. Snoke designed it this way.” Ren turns to him fully, looking grave. “I’ll have to carry you on my back.” 

Hux laughs. Ren’s expression remains serious. 

“That’s absurd,” Hux says. He looks again at the pools that stretch out across the field, noticing now how thin the webbing of dry land between them is. He groans. “Ren--”

“No debate.” 

Ren kneels down, showing Hux his back. Prompting him to climb on. 

_No_ , Hux thinks, more to himself than to Ren. 

_We’ll be over the pools swiftly_ , is Ren’s response, clipped but soft in Hux’s mind, as if he feels some kind of authentic sympathy for Hux having to endure the humiliation of being carried. _Try to enjoy me kneeling for you, at least_ , Ren suggests, turning his cheek toward Hux in a gesture that’s either a concession or a command, or both. Ren excels at contradicting himself. 

“Why bring me at all if it complicates things this much,” Hux mutters. This question has already been asked and answered, so no one responds. Hux groans and relents, bending down to wrap his arms around Ren’s neck. He only partly wishes he was wrapping his hands around Ren’s neck instead, to throttle him. Ren grabs his thighs with embarrassing familiarity and hoists him up with ease. The first jolt of adjustment as Ren stands sends unwanted arousal down through Hux’s gut and toward his groin. 

“Go,” Ren says to Wyn and Ilar. “I’ll follow.” 

They set off, leaping gracefully from one narrow foothold to another as they move around the pools. Hux tightens his legs around Ren involuntarily when he sets off behind them, and tries not to linger on his gratitude for Ren instructing the others to go first, so they won’t see Hux being carried like this. He doesn’t want Ren sensing that he’s grateful for anything right now. 

Ren squeezes Hux’s thighs as if to acknowledge that he has. Hux glowers ahead at the structure they’re moving toward, on the other side of the field full of pools. It looks like the entrance to a mine but grander, in Snoke’s fashion, with soaring columns framing a massive armored entryway. 

“What would happen if one of us stepped into these pools?” Hux asks, his mouth close to Ren’s ear and his cock actually beginning to harden from all the jostling as Ren maneuvers quickly around the pools, Hux bouncing against his back with every long stride. 

“You’d become like them,” Ren says. 

“Who?”

“The guards we’re charging toward.” 

“I hope this mist doesn’t have a similar effect,” Hux says, noticing as he says so that it doesn’t seem to be disturbing the surface of the pools, just dissipating into nothing overtop them. 

“The mist is good,” Ren says. “Everything here is, or was. Before Snoke found it. The water in the pools is non-native. Snoke brought it here.” 

“And where did Snoke come from, exactly?”

“I can’t speak of that now.” 

Hux didn’t expect an answer. He sighs and tries to adjust himself so that his stiff dick isn’t rubbing against Ren’s back, but it’s useless. He’ll be leaking into his briefs by the time they’ve crossed over the last of the pools. 

“It’s okay,” Ren says, as if Hux asked his permission to have an erection.

“It’s just the-- Friction,” Hux mutters. As if Ren needs or deserves an explanation. 

“I like it,” Ren admits. 

“Great. Wonderful, glad to be of service.”

By the time they reach the other side of the field of pools, Hux’s dick has begun to chafe. This hasn’t lessened his hardness, however. He slides off Ren’s back, adjusting his jacket, which is just short enough not to cover the bulge in his too-tight pants. There have been a few occasions when he’s been glad to have a modest endowment, and they’ve all involved being erect in tight pants while in public. Nobody seems to be looking in his direction regardless. They’re all staring ahead, at the entryway to the kyber mine. 

“We’ll open the door with the Force,” Ren says, speaking to Wyn and Ilar. He must be talking aloud only for Hux’s benefit. “The guards won’t pour out to meet us, but they’ll be aware of our presence. They’ll be stationed strategically throughout the facility. I anticipate a lengthy battle. They’ll attempt to exhaust us with a staggered attack, but we shouldn’t have any trouble dispatching with them as they appear. Hux,” he says, turning. “Just keep back while we fight them. Don’t use your blaster.”

“I know that much,” Hux says, snapping this too angrily to conceal how annoyed he is to be instructed to stay back and not participate even strategically. “I’m assuming they have the same armor that Snoke’s guards on the _Supremacy_ did.” Which was blaster-proof. 

Ren nods. “Use our connection to reach out to me if you need to. Don’t make a sound or any sudden moves once we’re inside. Creep along behind us. Stay in the shadows.”

“I’m to remain useless, got it.”

“You’re not useless,” Wyn says. “Can’t you feel it, through the bond?”

“Feel what?” Hux asks, glancing at Ren. 

“Nothing,” Ren says. He gives Wyn a look. “Just do as I say. Let’s move.” 

Ren stomps forward and the Knights follow. Hux moves awkwardly behind them, cursing his dick for somehow still being stiff. He blames Ren, who is probably still enjoying the idea that Hux is suffering with arousal in the midst of all this, crediting himself. 

Then he understands what Wyn meant, because he _can_ feel it: knowing that he put Hux in this state has boasted Ren’s stupid, childish confidence. He feels powerful, going into this fight, because Hux is with him, also because Hux clung to him and grew hard for him as they made their way over those pools. It really is that simple, with Ren. Hux would be dead if it wasn’t. 

Hux turns to observe the landscape behind them while the Force users part the giant doors to the stronghold, which creak open slowly even with all three of them working on the task. Behind them he can see the canyon walls, the glistening pools, that mist that whispers over everything. The moon is close to setting. He feels he shouldn’t like this place, as it’s attuned to people like Ren and laid with traps by Snoke, but he can feel a kind of hum from beneath his feet that makes him feel welcome here, and safe, even as they prepare to infiltrate this guarded fortress. He supposes it’s the crystals. He studied their weaponizing properties as extensively as he could in school and afterward, has always been fascinated by them and confounded by them, too. They don’t respond well to most weaponization. They’re seemingly perfect for it, powerful and self-regenerating, precise, but they wither away from it with resistance, most only capable of one powerful strike and then prone to complete power death or explosive instability. Hux was only able to utilize them as a power source for infrastructure on Starkiller. The stolen sun powered the weapon itself. Ren had once told him that the crystals ‘liked’ the icy planet they’d built the base upon. Hux had either snarled at him or rolled his eyes. He can’t remember now, but it did seem true in the sense that they worked best there as opposed to in lab settings. 

_Come_ , Ren says, deep and steady in Hux’s mind once the doors are opened. Hux’s wilting erection throbs once, but as he walks behind Ren and the Knights into the chill dark of the stronghold, it dies off at last. There is something lurking in there. Some remnant of Snoke. He can feel Ren sensing it, and it clouds through Hux, too, making his fists curl at his sides. 

At first Hux thinks he can hear whispers in the dark, but there is no sound. He’s hearing the echoes of the exchanges that Ilar and Wyn are having with Ren through the Force. They’re sensing the location of enemies concealed ahead, sharing information and composing battle plans.

It’s impressive, from what Hux can tell. They work with a fluid efficiency. The years of experience they’ve had together in situations like this are evident. 

This is his impression even before the first five guards rush them, leaping down from unseen platforms overhead. Hux grabs for his blaster instinctively but only squats low to the ground once he’s drawn it, observing. 

He never saw the guards in Snoke’s throne room actually fight. He saw them react instantaneously to anyone approaching Snoke without the proper measure of respect, but Snoke always waved off their alarm. He’s seen Ren fight before, but never in tandem with his team. 

It’s really sort of beautiful, with a brutal and unstoppable momentum that flows from one strike to the next, as if every move of the guards is anticipated, because of course it is. Ren will sense Hux’s admiring attention and grow even more cocky, but in their current situation this will benefit Hux, too, if Ren’s power really stems from his confidence. And it seems to: he’s killed three guards by the time Wyn and Ilar have finished with each of theirs. Hux supposes it might always be this way with Ren. Why would the others follow him if he wasn’t the most powerful of all of them by far? 

When the first five guards are dead, Ren proceeds ahead with Wyn and Ilar his sides. He tugs Hux along via the connection, telling him to follow and to keep close, but not too close. 

Ha, well. That’s already and always an instruction Hux gives himself when it comes to Ren. 

More guards drop down from the shadows. Like the ones in Snoke’s throne room, they all wield different weapons. Hux thinks of what Ren said about the pools outside transforming anyone who wandered into them into one of these mindless fighting drones. That can’t be right. If it’s that easy, why would Snoke not have transformed the entire galaxy into these things, or at least more of it? 

Perhaps it’s because these ones are so easily dispatched by Ren and his Knights. The sheer number of them as they move deeper and lower into the stronghold seems to be the real challenge, as Ren predicted: he’s tiring somewhat. Hux can feel it, and it makes his heart pound. Ren’s answering energy is wild with the thrill of battle, undaunted. He has a cut on his cheek from a whip-like weapon that one guard slashed at him with while he destroyed another. Hux will make him treat it with bacta as soon as they’re back. One scar on Ren’s face is enough.

Hux thought the experience of hanging back to watch the melee would be yet another humiliation, but he feels an elated kind of pride as they grow closer to the payload of crystals. He’s enraptured by every fluid movement of Ren and his Knights, and particularly Ren’s, though the way Ilar uses his broadsword as if it’s as light as a feather in his grip is mesmerizing, too, and Wyn’s weapon fascinates him even when she’s only holding it. It looks almost like the heavy-charge shock batons that some of his troopers use, but the energy that moves between its three unleashed prongs is kyber-fueled, sparking in the way that Ren’s lightsaber does when she connects with her targets. It melts the guards’ armor on contact, transforming it into a molten substance that debilitates them before she finishes them off.

Ren continues to do the most damage as they move through the maze of underground tunnels in the dark, their way lit only by the red glow from Ren’s and Wyn’s weapons. Hux doesn’t need even that much illumination, seeing everything just as Ren does through the dark, through their connection. Every time Ren lands a charging blow, Hux feels the reverberation shaking through his own bones like it’s his victory, too. He chews his bottom lip when he realizes he’s grinning like a lunatic, almost compelled to shout out a triumphant cheer as Ren beheads one guard only to spin around to do the same to another. 

Though Ren is exhausted by the time they’ve reached the threshold of the kyber caves, Hux can sense that he’s also disappointed to realize there are no more enemies, and that he hasn’t felt so returned to himself or free since the last time he fought like this. The presence of his Knights buoys this victory even further, and being able to show off in front of Hux seems to be a significant source of his current satisfaction as well. Hux hangs back and watches as Ilar and Wyn bow to Ren when the fight is over, both of them taking a knee. 

Ren is sweat-soaked, hair plastered to his cheeks, chest heaving. There’s another cut on his arm, tearing through his sleeve. Even with his gloves still on, Hux can feel through their connection that the knuckles on both of Ren’s hands are bruised and bleeding. He fights with his hands whenever he can, Hux has noticed. There’s something bluntly appealing about this, like so much of Ren’s physicality.

Ren looks up from his Knights, shifting his gaze to Hux. Behind him, the kyber glows brilliantly from the uppermost walls of the mine. Ren looks glorious, a towering silhouette framed by all that glittering power. And he knows it. 

“Come,” Ren says, beckoning Hux with one outstretched hand. “It’s safe now.”

Hux withholds a groan. Ren always has to spoil anything organically good with his over the top theatrics and boasting. His greed for recognition is staggering. 

Regardless, Hux goes to him as asked. The Knights stand and remove their helmets. Ilar is breathing hard, but Wyn seems undimmed by the battle. She’s illuminated by it if anything, her skin glowing with what looks like warmth but untainted by sweat. 

“Fuck,” Hux says under his breath when he pulls his eyes from Ren and the Knights and focuses on the bounty now laid out before them. He walks to the edge of the mine’s entrance and sees that it stretches on farther than he can see in every direction, the deposits winding into tunnels in five places that are currently visible. The crystals have a whitish glow that should be blinding but feels like a balm against Hux’s eyes, like the mist outside felt on his skin. 

“The energy,” Ilar says, his voice hushed with something that sounds a bit like fear. “Master, I think-- It feels wrong to be here. In this presence.” 

“No,” Ren says, sharply enough to draw everyone’s gaze away from the crystals. “Who would be the guardians of this place if not us? Those mindless things we just destroyed? Snoke, who tainted everything he touched? As we stand here, we have rightfully reclaimed what should have always been ours.”

“Yes, master,” Ilar says, head bowing.  

“Snoke was selling this,” Hux says, eyes widening when he looks at the crystals again. 

“Yes,” Ren says. “Even a crystal that fits in your palm could power an entire settlement.” 

“We can build so much with this.” Hux can feel himself almost drooling. His mouth keeps dropping open, and he knows he’s gaping like a kid. He wants to dive down into the mine, feels like the energy of the crystals would catch and support him. 

Remembering what Ren said about the filth of credits and his defense of the navigators as a resource too sacred to aid in the funding of the Order, Hux looks again at Ren, expecting to find him reproachful and morose, judging. 

Ren doesn’t look angry or disappointed by Hux’s reeling thoughts of all the ways this wealth could be transferred to great success for the Order. He looks hungry, like he’s been walking all this way to enjoy some meal that still tempts him, out of reach. Hux senses Ren’s greed rising up to meet his own, though Ren is imagining other glories. Things more personal. He’s also thinking about fucking Hux, so hard, sealing his victory in their bed.

“Now what?” Wyn says, interrupting the crackling thing that pulled Hux closer to Ren in one staggering step before she spoke. 

“I’m going to build my fortress here,” Ren says, his gaze still locked on Hux’s. “On this mountainside, over this mine. This shall be our new home. I feel that it’s right.”

He turns to his Knights for confirmation. They both nod, and Hux can see that they’re not just telling him what he wants to hear. Even Hux feels it. This place is special: dangerous, powerful. Fragile, too. It needs their protection.

“It will be done,” Hux says when Ren looks to him again. 

_Yes_ , Ren thinks, this confirmation like a ribbon of heat that curls up through Hux. It feels like a prophecy that Ren has brought to life with a single word that he didn’t even need to speak. He only had to make Hux hear the blood-hot truth of it. 

Hux hasn’t been properly high in a long time. Drinking is different; it’s a diffusion of his post-work tensions. He’s only done harder drugs a few times, when he was younger, and what he’s feeling as they leave the caves and make their way back through the dark that he can see through, because Ren can see through it, should be terrifying him. Something has wound its way into his system, mind and body. It’s an unnatural elation that feels too much like real trust, because he can feel every breath Ren takes in this darkness and it seems like they can’t hide anything from each other here, also like they don’t need to. 

Pulling himself away from this sensation is difficult. Painful, even. It will be easier after they’ve fucked. Hux feels like he did that first time they ended up together in his bed, when Ren burst into his quarters and slid to a stop in his bedroom doorway. Like that time, he knows that Ren is feeling it, too: like they’ll die if they don’t have each other soon, as if something that exists in the space between them is starving, withering away, and they have to crush their bodies together to feed it. 

“Will this place be safe without our presence?” Ilar asks when they’re nearing the shuttle, the sun risen now behind the clouds and illuminating the mist so that it seems to sparkle down through the canyon walls. 

“We’ll move the flagship here,” Ren says. 

“I’ll give the order as soon as you’ve powered the ship on,” Hux says when Ren glances at him as if he’s expecting some objection. Hux isn’t sure why. Finally, what Ren has suggested makes sense to him. These riches can’t be left unguarded, and he would trust no one but himself to do so.

Hux orders the _Finalizer_ to their location. It’s arrives just as they break atmo, stretching gloriously into view as if called home. Hux is antsy to be back aboard his ship, in his room, under the weight of Ren’s thrusting body. 

All of it feels like it belongs to him now, as it rightfully should. Ren included.

He keeps this thought segregated from his baser lust as he walks with Ren from the shuttle bay on the _Finalizer_ bay and toward their quarters. Neither of them speaks or makes eye contact with any passerby in the hallways. Hux can still feel Ren breathing as if it’s something that’s happening to him, too. He supposes it’s really just his own breath, and only his imagination that has synced it to Ren’s. 

Their connection wants and wants, all the way there, as if growing closer to the place where they can tear into each other at last is making it angrier, more impatient. Ren calls it a bond, but Hux thinks it’s more like a creature that came to life in the pressure chamber of their parallel need to have more, everything, all the power in the galaxy and then still something else, too, some harder to hold thing that is only happy when they’re pounding together in that bed, trying to make a claim on this thing so that it’s just a little bit more theirs alone, and less the other’s. 

Hux hardly knows what he’s thinking by the time they reach their room. His thoughts seem perilously mixed with Ren’s, nonsensical and dreamy. 

“I feel--” Hux says, turning to Ren when the front door slides shut behind them. 

“Yeah,” Ren says, already picking him up. “Me too.” 

Hux tastes Ren’s sweat when they kiss, and something darker and more dirty, even better. It’s like Ren is breathing the long fight with those guards back into Hux, letting him have some great big swallows of it. Also like being drained of energy and revitalized at the same time. Hux moans when Ren drops him onto the bed and uses the Force to pillow him all the way down, crawling onto him when his back is flush with the mattress. 

“You’re going to fuck me like this?” Hux says, like he didn’t know. “Dirty and damp--” 

“You like me like this.” 

“I don’t like you at all,” Hux says, grabbing Ren’s hair.

It’s true, and feels good to say so. He needs Ren, for now, wants him so badly that his thighs are shaking around Ren’s sides. He drooled a little for the sight of Ren when he stood backlit by those crystals after Hux had watched him kill fifteen, twenty enemies. He’d lost count. All of that is true but so is this, that he doesn’t _like_ Ren, doesn’t approve of him or understand him even when they’re half-sharing a mind. Ren’s eyes are wild with it, too. He feels the same. 

“Good,” Ren says. “‘Cause I’m gonna fuck you filthy. Get you dirty.” He’s already tearing Hux’s pants down, the nearest bottle of lube rolling clumsily into the bed via the Force. “Gonna get you squirming and whiny and all sticky with my spend.” 

“Spend,” Hux says, nose wrinkling. That’s a bit too poetic for this moment. 

“With my come,” Ren says, lowering his mouth to Hux’s ear while he parts his legs roughly with both hands, until Hux’s hip joints ache, his thighs pushed up high against his chest. His pants and boots are still on. Ren is hoisting his bared arse up, palming it with one slick hand, only interested in accessing his hole as swiftly as possible.

“Do it,” Hux says when Ren teases at his hole with two leather-clad fingertips. “Gloves off.” 

“You want my dirty fingers inside you?”

“They’re actually less dirty than the gloves,” Hux reasons. He grins when Ren looks at him like he’s just spoiled the mood. 

“Don’t pretend you don’t like me spilling my filth into you,” Ren says. He’s pushing shallowly into Hux with gloved fingertips, and the sensation is so good but also not enough. Hux doesn’t really care if Ren shoves into him with gloved or bare fingers, as long as he pushes in fast and hard and doesn’t stop. 

He’s not mindless with need enough to have missed that Ren just said _don’t pretend you don’t like me_ , however.

“You like being mine, like this,” Ren says, murmuring this into Hux’s ear. When Hux opens his mouth to protest, Ren shuts him up by pushing one slicked, gloved finger inside him, deep and steady, drawing a croaked-out moan from Hux. “Legs spread,” Ren says, shifting his mouth to hover just over Hux’s. “Wide open for me. You fucking love it.”

“Nnnn,” Hux says. He pinches his eyes shut and doesn’t attempt a real denial. There’s no lying to Ren, not about this.

“Yeah,” Ren says, breathing the word onto Hux’s lips like a kiss. “Yeah, you do.”

He’s fucking Hux with just one finger that’s not thick enough and moving too slowly. Hux whimpers when he realizes that Ren is going to make him beg, even now, when they’re both grimy from being planetside and shaking with how much they need more. 

“Ren,” Hux says, letting his voice break a little. It’s probably obvious. He’s already begging.

“What, Hux.” 

“I want your cock, please, get inside me--” 

“So greedy. Giving orders.” 

Hux opens his eyes, huffs. “You love it,” he says, clenching up tight around Ren’s finger. “When I give you orders.” 

They stare at each other. Hux breathes through his open mouth and waits to see how this will play. Ren looks like he’s afraid to make a wrong move, like this might be Hux’s killing blow. 

“Only because you’re always asking me to put you on your knees,” Ren says. 

Hux must look enraged by this remark, because Ren seems pleased, like he’s decided he’s won. He withdraws his finger and kisses Hux on the mouth, pressing his tongue in past Hux’s lips. Hux tries to bite at him but loses his breath when Ren’s cock pushes into him, then doesn’t want anything but more of it, deeper, and as hard as Ren can give it, tired as he is. 

Ren starts off with frantic vigor and Hux chants encouragement, his legs smashed between them and the angle not perfect but good enough for how much he just wants this, Ren over and over again inside him, pinning him beneath this feeling. When it’s that hard and fast Hux doesn’t have to think or move or do anything but contain all the power Ren pours into him, and it’s best like that. Anything else becomes tricky, harder to navigate without giving up something real. 

Ren’s initial energy drops off and he curls over Hux with determination, kissing him. His thrusts get longer, slower, more deliberate. He’s watching Hux’s face, dripping with renewed sweat, smelling like someone who has been fighting in a cave, the cut on his face surely stinging. He hasn’t slept since the last time he held Hux against his chest in this bed. Hux pushes Ren’s mist-matted hair back with both hands, exhaustion beginning to sink into him again, too. 

“Did you feel it,” Hux asks. “When I watched you fighting?” 

“Are you fuh-- Fucking kidding? Why do you think you could see in the dark?”

So Ren did that on purpose. Hux arches and comes for just a few rough pumps of Ren’s fist around his dick, was closer than he’d realized. He wants to ask how Ren did that, what it feels like to share his powers specifically to help someone see something that he wants them to see, but he can’t find his voice and wouldn’t know how to phrase the question in a way that would inspire Ren to actually respond. He moans with relief when Ren comes inside him, as if they’re sharing this, too. 

There’s a sense of uncoiling when they move apart, tension and questions and doubt retreating from Hux and going to a place where he’ll access it later. He remains on the bed and lets Ren undress him, sitting up only when he remembers that he wants to treat the cut on Ren’s cheek. Now that he’s seen it up close, he suspects it’s really not deep enough to scar, but just in case he walks into the fresher and digs out a jar of bacta while Ren’s come slimes down between his thighs. 

Ren walks into the fresher wearing nothing and doesn’t protest when Hux cleans his face with a cloth before smearing bacta onto the cut. In exchange, Hux doesn’t protest when Ren pulls him into the shower and puts the water on, not hot enough, or when Ren kisses him for a long time without even reaching for the soap. 

“It seems so strange now that it was always in such close reach,” Hux says when he’s pulled free from Ren’s tired kissing. He means the crystals, Snoke’s wealth and how it trickled or surged into the Order’s efforts according to Snoke’s whims. Ren nods and presses his forehead against Hux’s, perhaps thinking he’s referring to something else. “Do you really want to build our fortress there?” Hux asks.

He didn’t mean to say ‘our.’ Ren pulls back and blinks. 

“Yes,” he says. “And you’ll design it, as I commanded.” 

“Of course,” Hux says, relieved to be back in familiar territory. “Sir.” 

Ren turns Hux around, a bit roughly, and soaps his back. 

“The containment system, too,” Hux says when Ren has moved down to wash his arse. “I’m going to get started on a prototype for that. It will be an appropriate compliment to the base around the crystal deposits.” 

“No,” Ren says, squatting down to wash Hux’s thighs. 

“Sorry?” Hux half turns, frowning. “What do you mean, no?”

“We won’t be building your containment system on that planet or any others. I’ve considered your proposal and deemed it short-sighted.”

“You--” Hux tries to turn, jerking in Ren’s grip. Ren holds him in place, his hands moving gently on Hux’s calves. “What? No, Ren, you don’t understand the--”

“I understand perfectly. Better than you do, I think. You’re still overtired from the ordeal of losing Starkiller, even from losing Snoke, and all that’s changed since then. You need to think longer about what your next best strategy will be. Don’t take this personally, Hux. If you think about it, you’ll see that I’m right. You’ll thank me from stopping you from making another mistake.”

“Another!” 

Hux jerks free from Ren’s grip and almost slips on the shower floor as he whirls around to glower at him. Ren stands, slowly. He looks regretful. It’s fucking condescending. Like everything he does. 

“This would not be the first time you undertook a reckless scheme before thinking it through,” Ren says, the regret hardening into something else. “By my accounting.” 

So this is another warning. Hux wants to hit him. He wants his knife. 

“How is it reckless to develop a system that would log any comings and goings and shipments thereupon--”

“Because it’s still susceptible to human error, just like Starkiller. Someone could corrupt one planet’s shield, and if they cracked that they would be able to turn our own failsafe against us by using the shield to keep us out. There’s also a philosophical failing in this concept. It assumes that the people on these planets would feel protected. They wouldn’t, in most cases. They would feel unfairly imprisoned. The more we tighten our grip, the more settlements and even systems will slip through our fingers. You were right to encourage me to become a respected figure to the officers of the Order, to extend myself to them. We need to think like that on a larger scale. Those crystals represent a real future. We can’t just keep building prisons around all we control.”

“That was a beautiful speech, Supreme Leader,” Hux says, spitting rage behind every word. “Also a complete load of shit, if I may venture my opinion.” 

“You may, but I’ve made up my decision. Shut the containment system project down.” 

Hux leaves the shower before he can do something unwise, like kneeing Ren in the groin. No, his moment will come later. He must never forget that, or that Ren is using sex, too. Toying with his prey before the death blow because he thinks that there’s no harm in enjoying himself for a while, that Hux can’t really surprise or outmaneuver him. And he likes to watch Hux try. 

Hux is blind with rage as he moves into the bedroom, dripping wet. He’s seething so rabidly that he forgot to dry himself off. The heat of the fury between his ribs feels like it’s enough to dry him from inside out, like the lingering water from the shower will sizzle from his skin as it would off of a desert rock.

He hears the shower turn off. He needs to think quickly about how best to play off this moment. Ren will be waiting for either unrepressed anger or fake resignation. He will read Hux’s mind and think that he speaks the murky language that lives there fluently enough to understand the translation. 

There’s a sheepishness to Ren’s energy when he reenters the room. Hux has thrown on his robe, is reviewing his comm. There’s much to be done with the ship hovering over this new planet. Tomorrow will be a flurry of reassignments, plans, meetings and personnel headaches. 

“Trust me,” Ren says. He’s standing in the fresher doorway, always silhouetted by some light that burns behind him. “You’ll come up with a better idea.” 

“I always do,” Hux says, hoping that Ren knows he’s talking about the faked kidnapping, too, just as Ren was in the shower.

“I’ll count on it.” 

“Yes, good. You should.”

He dares a look at Ren then, making his face reflect the screen of his comm, cold and flat. Ren is, of course, adjusting his cock. 

The complete annihilation of Katalon still shocks Hux almost as much as Ren showing up in that cell to retrieve him did. There was something personal about Ren’s rage. That was what made Hux certain, for a time, that Ren believed the whole thing was real, that Hux had really been taken and held by their enemies. Because Ren had destroyed them completely in retaliation. 

“I need to sleep,” Ren says, as if to stave off some question he fears Hux might ask. He almost sounds like he’s begging. 

“Then come here,” Hux says. 

Hux is wearing the robe, still damp underneath it. He stretches out in bed on his back, watching Ren the whole time. Normally he’d roll away and let Ren curl around him without having to make eye contact. 

Here’s a braver way to do this to another person, he thinks, holding Ren’s gaze and hoping he’ll hear it. Coward.

The bacta has already sealed up the skin on Ren’s cheek. It was a shallow cut, easily erased. Hux can see that even in the light that glows softly from the fresher doorway. The lights in the bedroom are at zero. 

“How did you do that,” Hux says, stopping Ren short when he tries to lean in for a kiss. “In the mine, when I could see in the dark. Because you wanted me to. How.” 

“It’s just--” Ren looks away, which Hux considers a victory. He blinked first. When Ren looks at Hux again he’s studying him, careful. “I can’t explain it to someone who can’t use the Force. You wouldn’t understand.” 

“I’m sure you’re right.” 

Hux rolls over then, judging this as a good stopping place. This is how their exchanges will always be: competition mixed with theater, the balance tilting one way or the other, Ren thinking that Hux is just dancing on his own grave, biding time.  

Ren wraps around him as usual, but there’s something awkward in his grip, as if he’s suddenly not sure where to put his hands in order to assure that Hux won’t slip out of his arms in the night.

Because, in the process of making sure Hux saw how impressive he can be, Ren taught him how to see in the dark.

 

**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note a couple of new tags having to do with this chapter!
> 
>  
> 
> **

Hux can’t help himself. When he gets a new report from a trooper that is garbled in a particular manic way, he’s excited, even glad. It’s a new piece of evidence for his case study, and something that can only be discussed with his single partner in this side project, which is so confidential it’s largely unrecorded, existing only in private conversations that are muttered into the dark, close space between him and Ren in bed. 

It’s not that he doesn’t care about his troopers. He at least cares more than Ren does, and the ill effects of their exposure to the kyber caves are so few, especially when compared to what seems like an organic lift in morale and productivity that fascinates him almost to the point of salivating over the implications. Complications can of course arise, due to the kyber crystal’s intangible properties. It resists measurement and cooperation, which can make Hux grit his teeth in frustration just as often as it lifts his hopes for some truly spectacular realization of its full potential. The crystals are like Ren in this way. Hux sometimes has dreams that he pulls up Ren’s shirt or takes down his pants only to find some part of Ren’s body has transformed into shining crystal. These always feel like nightmares. 

He tries not to seem overenthusiastic when he presents any new reports of trooper contamination to Ren for his input. Ren can be cruel about Hux’s enthusiasm when he’s in the wrong mood. He’ll smirk like Hux’s interest is childlike, amusing, and will then insist that he’s doing so out of some kind of fondness, still with that smirk at the corner of his mouth. 

_You know how much I like it when you’re vibrating out of your boots with excitement_ , Ren said, once.

Hux isn’t sure that Ren is actually fond of him, but he’s known since the start of this that Ren needs him, and has discovered along the way that Ren has an insulting but useful possessive streak when it comes to securing Hux at his side, within reach, and in his bed. Ren’s insecurity has quieted somewhat since he embraced his role as a public leader and since his public for the most part embraced him, but he’s still set off by the implication that anybody might be making a claim on what’s his. It’s no secret that he considers Hux a thing that belongs to him, first and foremost, along with the rest of his empire. 

Hux doesn’t mind it as much as he might have once thought, at least not for now. Nudging Ren this way or that has never been as straightforward as Hux would like, or as he sometimes fools himself into thinking it could be, but he has gotten better at it, more skilled, and knowing just how Ren thinks of him is part of knowing how to control him. 

In a similar fashion, he now often knows where to find Ren during their daily routines. As Hux expected, Ren is loitering in his office, making himself comfortable with the updated holo designs projected out from the monitor on Hux’s desk. Hux has wondered if he can locate Ren due to their bond, though he gets no concrete information from it, just impressions and something that’s more like longing. The longing usually feels like his own, but he has to believe that some of it originates from Ren and reaches out to him, and when he hurries into Ren’s arms in answer the evidence seems to support this. Ren is always hard for him when Hux gets those particular needful urges, sensations, whatever they are. He’s often breathless and already grabbing at Hux as soon as he’s through the door of their bedroom or wherever else, half the time now using the Force to drag Hux’s heels across the floor. Hux has come around on that: it feels like power, and as much as he sometimes loathes that Ren has so much of it, he can’t deny that he responds to it in certain unavoidable ways, knees weakening as he’s drawn forward by it. 

“What do you object to today?” Hux asks, unable to conceal the cheerful lilt in his voice. He’s got his data pad tucked under his arm, the trooper’s report to his commanding officer loaded onto it. 

“It’s still not bleeding into the earth the way I want it to,” Ren says. He’s paging through the hovering designs impatiently, scowling at them. He hasn’t really looked at Hux yet. 

“Bleeding into the earth is not a translatable architectural term,” Hux says. “As we’ve discussed.” 

“You know what I mean.” Ren puts his fist on Hux’s desk and peers at him through the translucent blue of the designs for the fortified temple he wants at the base of his planetside residence. At least, Hux thinks of it as a temple. Ren doesn’t like that word. 

“Look,” Hux says, pointing. “The support beams go directly into the caves. If that’s not--” 

“I want an atrium at the base of the training arena,” Ren says, moving his finger to vaguely indicate this. “One that looks down into the caves. The crystals can serve as our sole light source there.” 

Hux wrinkles his nose, involuntarily. “Would that much close contact with the crystals even be advisable? I have another report here, from today. One that might interest you.” 

Ren pushes the hovering designs away. They evaporate into the air around him, transforming back into data stored in the projector on Hux’s desk. Hux could make the same gesture, anyone could, but something about the way Ren does it sends a shiver down along the backs of Hux’s arms. He has Ren’s full attention now. 

“I like that,” Hux says, gesturing to the heavy metal-cast clasp that rests against Ren’s shoulder, securing his obnoxious but admittedly regal cape there. The insignia on the clasp is the one Hux helped Ren design, a modification on the Order’s symbol, it represents the new glory of their young Supreme Leader’s reign. “I’ve not seen that one before, have I?”

“What’s this report.” Ren likes to pretend that he doesn’t enjoy the trappings of ruling that lie in the details, though they serve his vanity like nothing else. “From a trooper?”

“Yes.” Hux thinks of opening it on his data pad, reading directly from it, then decides to paraphrase. Ren’s attention is easier to hold when Hux relates these incidents like they’re stories, not reports. “Shall I detail it here, or wait until later?”

He’s beyond pretending that doesn’t look forward to those talks in bed, usually after they’ve fucked but sometimes before or even in place of fucking, if they’re tired.  

Ren studies Hux, perhaps sensing what he wants. Sometimes allowing Ren to do so is a bad move: denying Hux what he wants can be a favorite pastime of Ren’s. But lately things have been easy between them. Hux hasn’t let his guard down, not once. Nor has Ren. Instead they have come into a kind of unspoken stalemate, perhaps until the fortress is complete, or at least until the time comes to decide who will live in its spacious royal suite: just Ren, or Hux along with him. 

“Later,” Ren finally says, because of course he likes those talks in bed, too. He wouldn’t do any of this if he didn’t want to. Unlike Hux, he has no additional motivation. 

Hux feels pity for him, sometimes, in that respect. 

“Good,” Hux says. “Shall I reclaim my office, then, or do you continue to require my desk?”

Ren refuses to hold an office of his own onboard the _Finalizer_. He will accept nothing less than a throne room, and the designs for that, to be constructed at the center of his fortress on the planet they’re orbiting almost all the time now, are elaborate and oft-revised. 

He stands in answer to Hux’s question and stalks toward him, holding his gaze. Hux is tempted to laugh and ask Ren why he still postures like this, as if Hux needs to be courted with this impressive menace. He doesn’t laugh or ask or duck Ren’s stare, because that would push Ren away. Hux still needs him very close, and he does like this posturing, or at least the way Ren looks when he does it. 

“Take your office back,” Ren says when he’s come to stand just in front of Hux, too close. “And see to my request about an atrium.” 

Ren remains standing like that, as if he’s daring Hux to take the office back by force. At times he forgets himself and does this looming near-kiss stance in view of the Knights or, worse, the officers. Hux will fume with silent warnings: _get back, are you mad, they already write lurid stories about us on planets where we don’t control the press_. Ren must hear these things, through their bond and through the Force and because he’s not stupid, but keeping appearances strictly professional when in public with Hux is the one image-conscious edict he hasn’t come around on. 

“Fine,” Hux says. “I’ll look into it. But at this juncture I’d prefer to have some kind of solid wall between you and these crystals, at least. Whether they’re serving you or not. You’ve seen what they do to the non-Force users.” 

“You will never understand the difference between them and me.” 

Between you and me, he might as well have said. Hux lifts his eyebrows with subtle dismissal. He does have real work to do, and they can continue this dance together later, in real privacy. 

“Very well,” Hux says. “Orders received.” 

Ren kisses him twice: on the forehead, then the cheek. He leaves without meeting Hux’s eyes again. 

Hux stands there when Ren is gone, flushed and holding his data pad over his chest like a shield. Ren can still surprise him sometimes. Hux doesn’t like it, especially when it first strikes him as pleasant, wanted, as if Ren has bestowed a gift Hux didn’t realize he was asking for. If he can manage to do the same to Ren, to turn things around on him and watch the surprise bloom with a kind of grudging respect in Ren’s eyes, well: in the absence of a stroke of genius in new weapons development that hasn’t yet come, surprising Ren is Hux’s favorite pastime and often his greatest pride. 

The rest of the day is all routine. Hux rereads the trooper’s report to his commander twice, memorizing details so he can relay them to Ren later. He looks forward to it: denying that he craves the various comforts of their shared quarters is something he no longer has time for. Sometimes he thinks he was made for this very specific role in galactic history, designed to plan a slow coup of this precise nature, and sometimes he stands in the shower for a long time thinking about how central Ren himself is to the enjoyment Hux takes from maneuvering around him. When Ren is gone, there will still be the work, which Hux loves and believes in, but there won’t be the end-of-day respite from it, with its separate and differently thrilling frustrations. This could mean his ultimate goal is flawed. 

He has time, however, to figure this out. Ren is going nowhere for the foreseeable future, in part because he’s much better at crafting a public persona than Hux once suspected he would be. It helps that he’s young, and odd-looking in a way that people seem to find interesting in the same way that Hux does, or near enough to it, a way that pulls people in with an openness that should be repulsive. Ridding himself of the mask was itself an unintentionally masterful move, a windfall. Ren’s reputation for never showing his face made its eventual reveal feel like a concession to his people. It’s all been very well-received, according to Hux’s media experts and his own analysis. 

Predictably, it’s the officers who are closest to their young Supreme Leader in age who admire Ren most. They relate to Hux in the same fashion, and Hux’s alliance with Ren hasn’t gone unnoticed. Hux’s feelings about those whisperings range from a vain thrill to a gut-twisting anxiety. But it can’t be helped. Letting people talk about his relationship with Ren has a strategic purpose, same as everything Hux does. 

He refuses to consider the construction of their stronghold around the kyber deposits his main responsibility, but it is a time-consuming one, and it’s not actually all about Ren and his whims, whatever Ren thinks. Full possession of the kyber caves has changed things for the Order so much already, financially and otherwise, within the past year. Ren’s style of leadership has done so, too. There are elements of it that Hux dislikes and sometimes vocally disagrees with, but he can’t deny that, in combination with the riches that now flow to them freely and not in a narrow funnel controlled by Snoke, it has been a prosperity thus far. 

Hux is suspicious of prosperity in a way that reflects his suspicions of Ren himself: when things seem easy, when Ren’s smile looks so real, when Ren is too tired to take the lead in bed and lets Hux do whatever he likes to him. It’s dangerous, a kind of trap, to trust these incidents as signs that there is a long stretch of smooth sailing ahead. Hux is waiting for the moment when he’ll have to leap to action to save everyone from some unforeseen complication of the Order’s current bold expansion, and he’s waiting to do the same for himself when his fortune with Ren inevitably turns. 

There will be a time when Ren stops kissing his face the way he did today. Hux is watchful, even as he seems to swoon into moments like that. He would be unwise not to, and he won’t be taken off guard when those things slip away from him. He’ll feel a new chill blowing in through the safety net that was once stretched out beneath him. He’s too attuned to Ren’s moods to miss it, through the bond and otherwise. He’s already making plans for the coming change in the wind. 

All of this must always be in the back of his mind, but he’s still light in his steps when he makes his way to their quarters at the end of the day. Their bond, or simple familiarity, tells him that Ren will be waiting for him, worn down after a day that included two expansion council appearances and a long stretch spent training with his Knights. When Hux enters he finds Ren as expected: already half-undressed in their bedroom, that grand cape tossed haphazardly on the bed. Ren has at least placed the unfastened insignia clasp on the side table. 

Hux brushes past Ren, employing a careless energy that he hopes Ren will find maddening, and picks up the clasp. He examines it as if it’s the most dynamic, interesting thing currently in the room. 

“Lovely work,” he says, rubbing his thumbs over the groves in the Order’s symbol. It’s overlaid with a pointed prism that represents Ren’s saber and, more broadly, the bounty of the Order’s hard won connections to Force users and their abilities. “When did you have this made?” 

“I needed something to hold the cape up properly.” Ren shrugs when Hux looks at him. “Cape’s heavy.” 

“Yes. It looks good, too, I think.” Hux sets the clasp down and lifts his arms over his head, stretching with a moan and shrugging off his greatcoat. “I don’t think your atrium will work,” he says. 

“Then some other mechanism.” 

Ren walks closer. He’s wearing only the tight pants he uses when he trains, which hide beneath his grander accoutrements all day. He prefers these to proper trousers. Hux finds it grotesquely beneath Ren’s position to continue going about in stretchy pants, but Ren won’t budge on this. 

“Some other mechanism,” Hux repeats, almost mocking but not quite, when Ren takes hold of his hips and gives them a possessive, needy, admittedly arousing squeeze.

“You’ll come up with something.” 

“To make it bleed into the earth?” Hux is so tired of that phrase. He wishes he could gut it and bury it. “Maybe.”

“You did it with Starkiller. The base was married to the planet. That’s what I want.” 

The hair on the back of Hux’s neck stands up. It’s the mention of Starkiller as something to be emulated, or the word ‘married,’ perhaps. Or Ren’s apparent fondness of the concept, architecturally. 

“It’s important,” Ren says, his lips moving to Hux’s neck as the collar of his uniform pulls away, exposing vulnerable skin. “I don’t just want to sit on the surface of this place. I intend to reach down into it. To really make it mine, all of it.” 

This is probably a cheap way to put Hux in mind of sex. With Ren’s mouth moving in teasing brushes and gusts of hot breath down along the side of Hux’s neck, it works. It’s needless, however: they have something of a routine. Sex first, then bathing, followed by a meal during which they’ll have arguments about work that fizzle in bed, where they’ll either have more sex or a softer sort of conversation. It’s usually the latter, but there are evenings when only some of this happens, or none of it. Ren is away at times, brooding or busy with the Knights. Hux still pulls the occasional back to back shifts with no rest cycle, if some delicate operation needs his constant oversight. Ren is usually at his side during the second half of a shift like that, watching him for signs of weakness. He hasn’t caught Hux faltering in his steps so far. 

“I’ll continue to think about it,” Hux says. 

“About what,” Ren mutters, his mouth on Hux’s neck.

“How to make the fortress yours. Really yours, all the way to the bedrock.” 

Ren hums under his breath and moves behind Hux, his hands circling Hux’s waist and going for the clasp on the front of his belt. Hux slumps back against him, letting his limbs grow heavy. He vastly prefers this to being told to undress and then watched as if he’s putting on a show. Ren knows Hux likes it this way, so every time he does it feels like a concession, a little chip of victory Hux can add to his secret pile of them. 

“I can always promote someone else to oversee the project,” Ren says. It’s either another concession or a threat. “If the details are wearying you.” 

“Since when do you care what wearies me?” 

Hux has his eyes closed when he asks this, his head tipped back onto Ren’s shoulder. Half the time he thinks he won’t want to fuck as soon as he’s through the door, but once Ren’s hands are on him he wants it more than a stiff drink, which is still his second favorite off-duty indulgence. Ren refuses to join him in that one. Hux thinks it’s because Ren is afraid of what he might say, or do, or confess, inexperienced as he is with the loss of full control. 

“Why are you thinking about that?” Ren asks, as if Hux is wishing he was having a drink rather than letting Ren undress him.

“I don’t know,” Hux says. “Why are you reading my mind.” 

“You project your thoughts about me. It can’t be helped.” 

“I don’t believe that,” Hux says, turning languidly in Ren’s arms even so. “I never have.” 

“You don’t believe anything I say. So what.” 

Ren kisses Hux when he opens his mouth to respond, clearly not really wanting an answer. 

Hux presses his tongue out to meet Ren’s, lazy and familiar. There’s a melting feeling to it, especially with Ren gripping his waist in a way that he can lean back into, his hold on Hux just sturdy enough to make Hux feel like he can almost float here with his arms loose around Ren’s neck. Hux is still in his undershirt, and can feel the heat of Ren’s bare chest through the thin fabric. He would have an erection already if he wasn’t thinking about what Ren just claimed, if it’s true that he never believes anything Ren says. He doesn’t like to admit it when Ren is right about him, and anyway there must be some things Ren says that Hux can take at face value. He wouldn’t have been able to share a bed with Ren for a year if that weren’t true. 

But he can’t think of anything he doesn’t doubt at least a little, at first, when Ren says it. 

Ren presses him to the bed, climbing onto him with the same lazy pace that Hux has set. Hux can trust this, anyway: that Ren wants him throughout the day and waits to have him, unless he can’t wait, in which case he’ll find Hux and make up some excuse to gather him away for a fuck. Ren carries lubricant around in his pocket like a maniac. Hux ridicules him for it and complains about the interruptions as if he’s not always glad for them. Where would he be if Ren didn’t still want him this much, a full year from the novelty of the start of this thing? It’s frightening to think about how fragile this part of his plan always is, how much he relies on it and can only control it insofar as he could ever have made Ren want him, which was only by being whatever he was already, before things changed. That ability to secure Ren’s attentions was almost entirely luck, and in the same sense Hux can’t control how long he’ll be able to keep those attentions, even as he holds Ren’s whole massive self between his legs. 

He’ll discover the limits of Ren’s fascination eventually. He schools his expectations quietly, constantly, even in moments like this, when Ren makes him gasp and whine and sink almost entirely into this contentment. He’s caught himself wanting to dissolve into it completely, if not believing that he can. Orgasms don’t count; those blank-minded moments are purely physical, not like this other, more dangerous impulse toward release. 

“Roll over,” Ren says, maybe sensing Hux’s lingering tension. 

“No,” Hux says. He doesn’t always want to be reduced to a sobbing mess with Ren’s tongue between his arse cheeks. Sometimes he’s still horrified that he ever allowed it at all, never mind with such frequency. “I don’t want that right now.” 

“What do you want.” Ren keeps his face buried against Hux’s throat as he asks the question, unable to face him when he confesses that he’s at Hux’s mercy if he means to get what _he_ really wants, which is Hux simpering and grateful, sweet for him in the aftermath. 

“Just fuck me,” Hux says, affecting a laziness that’s deeper than the one he authentically feels. He lets his eyes fall shut, lifts his arms overhead and crosses his wrists. Faking a sort of half-yawn, he gives Ren’s sides an encouraging squeeze with his thighs. “Please, sir.” 

The employment of ‘sir’ and ‘Supreme Leader’ are still delicate, a year later. Hux feels a shiver move through Ren now, up along his sides, and he has to stop himself from smiling in victory at a particularly well-placed ‘sir.’ 

“Spoiled little slut,” Ren says, purring this into Hux’s ear as if he’s returning his effort, slotting one of his own delicate endearments-that-aren’t perfectly into place. 

Hux can’t stop the shudder of interest that goes through him, or how hard his cock gets for being called that. He grunts, anyway, and opens his eyes when he turns his face against Ren’s. 

“Fuck off calling me spoiled,” Hux mutters, his lips catching against Ren’s. “I work my arse off for you every day.” 

“For me?” Ren snorts. Hux can’t keep from grinning at being called out, fairly: of course he doesn’t really work for Ren, and it’s somehow wonderful, in his present condition, to know that Ren is aware of this. “You want to be fucked, huh?” Ren says, sitting up and sliding away from him, “Get on your hands and knees. Show me.” 

Hux sighs, his cock growing harder for the thought of displaying himself for Ren. He’s still wearing his briefs, tenting them dramatically. He parts his thighs a bit more widely, making sure Ren’s gaze sneaks down to the darkening wet spot forming on the fabric. 

“Now who doesn’t believe anything the other says,” Hux says. He flops onto his stomach, arches his back and enjoys the almost palpable sensation of Ren’s gaze resting hungrily on his arse. “I tell you what I want and still I have to _show_ you.” 

“Hands and knees.” 

Hux rises as gracefully as he can while still managing to seem lazy about it. He arranges himself, head down and arse up, before peeking back over his shoulder at Ren as he slides his briefs down, slowly. Ren watches him shimmy out of them with a gravely serious expression that makes Hux want to laugh. He suppresses the urge and lets Ren go on watching as he reaches back to spread his arse cheeks with both hands, face blazing and cock leaking. 

“Just shove in,” Hux says, lifting one shoulder. “You can be rough with me. I’m in a good mood.”

“As if you don’t like it rough when you’re in other moods.” 

Hux groans and rests his forehead on the sheets, authentically impatient. Ren wants every fuck to be like a little drama, with a script and vacillating tensions. Hux can appreciate keeping it interesting this way, but sometimes he just wants to be taken hard and fast. It needn’t be a three act play every time. 

Ren gets the lube and slicks himself efficiently, at least. Hux wiggles his arse a bit, burning face buried against the bedsheets. He likes this very much, even considers it a kind of achievement to be the only person the Supreme Leader takes to bed, but he’s still got his spread arse cheeks up in the air for Ren, and a hot streak of humiliation winds through him when he considers the view that Ren has of his twitching, wanting hole. 

Hux shouts wordlessly when Ren grabs his hips and gives him what he asked for, pushing the head of his cock in roughly before sliding home slow. The stretch stings against Hux’s rim in a way that makes him grimace, face hidden. He huffs and rubs his face against the bedsheets, clenching around the width of Ren in feeble pulses. 

“Thought you could take it rough,” Ren says, and he leans down over Hux’s back with a kind of gentleness that Hux interprets as a taunt. Ren kisses Hux’s neck, licks his hot cheek. His grip on Hux loosens and his hands slide up over Hux’s shuddering chest, fingertips just grazing over his nipples before moving down to his belly. 

“I can,” Hux says, turning his face toward Ren’s. “Clearly, I am.” 

“You lost your breath for a moment.” 

“That will happen when a cock gets suddenly jammed up your arse. No cause for concern.” 

“Mhm.” 

Ren sometimes acts as if he’s more attuned to Hux’s comfort levels than Hux himself, as if the Force bond gives him authority on the subject. Hux turns away from Ren’s sloppy kisses and shifts until the immense intrusion of his dick feels comfortable. It’s better like this, with Ren bent over his back, both arms wrapped around Hux’s chest. The angle is preferable. 

“Go on,” Hux mutters, bumping his arse back and swallowing a moan when this makes the angle even better. “You’ve not injured me.” 

Ren’s grip on him tightens, and he releases a shaky breath near Hux’s ear. He doesn’t like the implication or any reminders about having hurt Hux in the past. Hux finds it ridiculous, when their every interaction hinges on the fact that Ren is _letting_ him live, though neither of them would like to state it that way, Hux out of pride and Ren for whatever vague reason he does anything. 

“Here,” Ren says, tipping onto his side and hugging Hux against his chest. “I want it like this.”

“So take it like that,” Hux says, allowing Ren manhandle him into position. He moans again when Ren pulls his left leg back, tucking it around his waist. There’s a twinge of pain in the stretch that feels good when Hux melts into it, arching. 

The angle isn’t good for hard thrusting, which is probably why Ren chose it: to deny Hux a chance to have exactly what he asked for, and also because he seems to want to last. Hux doesn’t mind, after a few slick thrusts. Ren is still doing all the work, as he should. Hux claws at the bedsheets, then reaches back to grip Ren’s side when they both start to get sweaty from the effort of front to back rutting. 

“That what you need?” Ren asks, maybe hoping Hux will beg to have him harder, faster. 

“Yes,” Hux says instead. He reaches up to grab for Ren’s ear, likes to dig his short nails into the back of it while Ren fucks into him. “Keep going, please.” 

“Little ass feels so good,” Ren says, growling this into Hux’s ear. He’s close already; Hux can feel him trembling, his grip on Hux’s thigh tightening. “So tight for me, fuck.” 

“Only for you,” Hux says, nodding, drowsy with how nice it feels when they get to this point, clumsy and mindless, moving against each other with new urgency. “Supreme Leader,” he adds, more quietly, as if he’s shy about saying it now, like this. 

Ren groans and rolls him onto his front, kneels behind him and starts fucking into him hard, grunting with every thrust. Hux grins against the bedsheets and rewards Ren with a shameless moan of approval. He’s going to come just for being fucked into the mattress like this, his cock leaking between the bedsheets and his belly. 

“Tell me,” Ren says, breathless, “How much you like that.” 

“So good, _Ren_ , yes--”

“What, what do you like, Hux.”

“Your cock, _ah_ , inside me, fucking me, like that, just like that--” 

Hux spreads his legs for better traction and yelps when Ren connects hard with his prostate. Ren’s pace grows more frantic in response. He’s trying to fuck Hux straight through the bed and it feels incredible, Hux is lost to it, making more shameful noises and not caring that he whimpers pathetically when he comes. 

“Oh, fuck,” Ren says. Hux can hear that his teeth are grit, that he’s barely holding back his own orgasm. “Yeah, you-- You like that, rubbing yourself off while I pound you--” 

“Nhnn,” Hux says, eyes closed, still throbbing against the mattress. 

“Fucking love coming on this dick, don’t you.” 

“I do,” Hux says, growing oversensitive as Ren continues to rut him against the mattress. “Ren, please--”

“Shh,” Ren says, leaning down to whisper this against the back of Hux’s ear as his dick begins to pulse within Hux’s hole. “There, there you go,” Ren says, shaking, teeth grit, barely able to speak as he comes. “There, _yeah_ , just. Take it.” 

Hux can’t contain his laughter now, but it’s brief. Ren grunts and bites at Hux’s jaw when he’s emptied himself, still deep inside Hux and heavy against his back. His labored breathing feels good pressed against Hux’s own, like a confirmation of Hux’s victory over him. Ren is sated and tired, content. Hux can feel it through the bond, mixing with his own blissfully drained energy. 

They’ve been lingering in the aftermath longer of late. Hux is no hurry to get Ren’s softening dick out of him, though he is thinking about a shower. These immediate post-fuck moments are a kind of respite that he hesitates to emerge from, for his own sake as much as for whatever Ren gets from it. Neither of them does any pretending until they’ve regained their breath. 

Ren runs the point of his tongue up along the of side of Hux’s neck, both hands wrapped around Hux’s shoulders as if he needs to be held in place even while Ren is lying on top of him. Hux shivers and makes an encouraging sound when Ren gives his neck another long, slow stroke with his tongue. 

“You taste better after I’ve fucked you,” Ren says. “Your sweat, I mean.” 

“Mhmm, well, you’re biased.” 

“I want to go down to Duron tomorrow. To observe the progress.” 

“Again?” 

Ren is so impatient. He’s exhaustingly possessive of the planet he’s named Duron, where their kyber caves reside below the construction site that represents Ren’s future residence. Ren gets antsy if he hasn’t stalked around the site personally in the past few cycles, and he always wants Hux to come with him when he leaves the ship, presumably so Hux can’t begin to sow the seeds of his overdue coup while Ren is away. 

“I have some new questions for the foreman,” Ren says. He sits up on his elbows and noses at the back of Hux’s neck once more before pulling out of him. “You said there was a trooper incident.” 

“Not an incident so much as an observation. I’ll tell you all about it.” Hux rolls onto his back and arches into a full body stretch, enjoying the well-used feeling that pervades not just his arse but the muscles from his shoulders to his thighs. “Going to have a shower first,” Hux says when Ren crawls back onto him. Hux makes a half-hearted attempt to pull free when Ren kisses him, offering Ren only the corner of his mouth. 

“You’ll come with me,” Ren says, as if this isn’t obvious. “To Duron, tomorrow.”

Hux withholds the urge to roll his eyes. “Certainly, Supreme Leader, as you wish. Are you going to let me have a shower without you, meanwhile?” 

Hux didn’t intend to sound quite so irritable or dismissive. He prefers to shower alone. Ren knows this, and it seems to authentically hurt his feelings. Hux finds this funny, also alarming. He worries sometimes that Ren is far more deranged than he seems to be on the surface and that he could be capable of consuming possessiveness that would do much more damage than the eventual boredom and indifference that Hux anticipates. It has been a whole year, after all, and lounging around with Ren like this in his rest cycle hours has to be at least some of the reason Hux hasn’t had any breakthroughs in weapons development or coup-planning that have lead to meaningful action.

“Did I make a mess of you,” Ren asks, still looming over him. 

Hux isn’t sure how to interpret the question. Ren is staring down at him with an uncomfortable intensity. Hux leans up to kiss Ren’s nose, hoping to dispel it. 

“Yes, you’ve made me a complete mess, as usual. I’ll just be a moment.” 

He gives Ren a peck on the lips and slides free, trying to keep from dragging his come-soaked arse across the bedsheets as he makes his exit. Ren remains in bed, watchful. 

Sometimes the shower is the only alone time Hux gets all day. Ren is always in his office, on his bridge, and if it’s not him it’s someone else with a near constant need of Hux. It’s good, this sense of importance that has flourished within him since Ren sliced Snoke in half, but being truly alone with his thoughts is a blessed mercy. He takes his time in the shower, twice catching himself feeling a little giddy for the thought of Ren out there seething because Hux insisted on being apart from him for a moment. Ren truly is a madman. The thought shouldn’t make Hux smile at the shower wall like a lunatic. 

_So proud of yourself for having become the most important whore in the galaxy_ , Brendol’s voice says. Hux forces the smile off his face. He can’t let himself feel smug about Ren’s attentions. They are a card to play, a thing to be taken advantage of, and nothing more, even if another year passes and Ren is still trailing after him, that bond he thrust upon Hux throbbing with pleasure for any proximity. 

Out of the shower, Hux orders their dinner while Ren takes his turn in the fresher. Ren sometimes makes specific requests but usually lets Hux pick whatever he wants for the meal they share at the end of the day. Much of their coexistence is like this: Hux is allowed to make the choice, but he is also doing the grunt work, placing the order. 

Hux drops onto the bed in his robe and listens to Ren’s shower running as more steam billows out from the fresher. He arranges his legs in a casually fetching position when he hears the water shut off: knees tipped open, the pale insides of his freshly scrubbed thighs exposed. 

Maybe he does get off a bit, occasionally, on being lusted after. Certainly he’s expecting to be paid handsomely for it in the end, one way or another. Life hasn’t handed him many advantages that he didn’t have to earn by kissing the right arses at the right times. If the business he conducts with Ren in this room makes him a whore, so be it. He’ll be the first whore to rule the galaxy. Not once has he looked at the plans for Ren’s throne room without imagining how he’ll modify everything when it all finally belongs to him. 

He opens his eyes and sees Ren standing naked in the fresher doorway, drying himself. Hux inches his legs apart a bit wider and wonders if Ren knows what he’s thinking when he looks at those throne room plans. He suspects Ren is just mad enough to get a thrill from Hux’s imaginings of a grand betrayal, if he’s noticed them. Ren will never consider Hux a real threat to his power. He’s too transfixed by the creamy spread of Hux’s thighs to see how they might become a vise around his neck. 

It’s all too easy, except that in a year Hux has really done nothing but stay here on his back under Ren’s hungry gaze. 

Acting hastily would be reckless. He can wait. 

“I ordered food,” Hux says. “Shall I tell you about the trooper report now?”

“If you’re not waiting to get fucked again, sure.” 

“Of course I’m not.” 

“You’re spreading your legs at me like you are.” 

Hux rolls his eyes. “Not everything I do is for your benefit.” 

“No kidding. But I walked out here and you opened your legs.” Ren comes to stand between them. Hux’s heels are hanging just over the end of the bed. “So well trained,” Ren says, reaching down to stroke Hux’s left ankle. “You did it without even thinking, is that it?”

“If you like. Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” 

Ren drops his towel on the floor and returns to the fresher, admiring himself in the mirror as he runs his fingers through his wet hair. 

“The trooper,” Hux says, legs still spread as if this is a natural posture. “He submitted a request to his commanding officer about wanting to stay planetside if possible. He even volunteered to take a lower position if necessary, janitorial or whatever was available.”

“Some people get attached to living off ship,” Ren says, still focused on his reflection. “It’s not necessarily the crystals he’s drawn to.” 

“He said the air there makes his bones sing.” 

Ren turns and lifts his eyebrows. “Maybe he was just a poetic kind of guy already.” 

“Mhm, probably not. We discourage poetic leanings. He also said he was able to scale a nearly vertical rock wall after his most recent guard shift, and that he doesn’t need to sleep while he’s on Duron because the planet sleeps for him.” 

Ren snorts. He comes to the door of the fresher and grips the top of the frame with both hands, thrusting his chest out as he stretches his back. And he makes fun of Hux for posing in seductive fashions. 

“He listed this as a benefit to his remaining there,” Hux says. “Suggesting that he could work shifts without a rest cycle, seeing as he’s conquered the need for sleep while existing within Duron’s atmosphere.” 

“He was sent to medbay, I presume.” 

“Yes. No physical abnormalities detected. He’s in the best shape of his career, et cetera.” 

“So what’s your hypothesis.” 

“Same as it was after the last report like this. Something about these crystals makes those exposed to them fanatically motivated. They feel like they can build the whole fortress with their bare hands if we let them.”

“But it’s not happening to all of them.”

“Or not all of them are reporting these feelings to their commanding officers.” 

Ren smiles a little, mostly in his eyes. Hux pulls his legs together and sits up. 

“Tell me about the guards you killed in the caves.” He’s asked before, but Ren was vague in answering. “The ones who wore red armor. They were conscripted into those roles by some property of the puddles we crossed over, yes?” 

“The ones on Duron were.” 

Ren’s face has changed. He doesn’t like talking about this, because the guards on Duron were like those he killed with the girl, and the girl and her Resistance friends are still nowhere to be found a year later. Surely hurting for resources at this point, they’ve gone deep underground. 

“Was the water in those puddles connected to the crystals?” Hux asks. It’s all been cleared away now. The Knights used the Force to do it, and it took ages, delaying the start of construction considerably. Ren has forbidden anything from behind built on the drained land. “You told me that Snoke brought it there,” Hux says when Ren offers nothing. Hux still knows precious little about Snoke and where he came from, as he is another sensitive subject. 

“Weaponizing these things is an abomination,” Ren says. 

“But you use them in lightsabers.” 

“Yes.” 

“So you’re wielding an abomination when you fight.” 

“That’s right.” 

Something about this response sends a peel of heat down toward Hux’s groin. Ren must feel it through the bond, because he looks pleased with himself. Hux startles at the buzz from the front room, a droid’s indication that their meal has arrived. 

“No need to fear it,” Ren says. “Wielding abominations is what you and I do best.”

“I’m not afraid,” Hux says, frowning. 

“You jumped, just now.”

“Because the-- Oh, forget it. I don’t know why I can’t learn that conversations with you go nowhere. If you ever feel like sharing any real information with me, please do.”  

“I try,” Ren says, watching Hux rise from the bed and adjust his robe on the way to the door. “You have trouble listening, I find.” 

“Right, that’s the problem, it’s all me. You certainly don’t speak in riddles and non-sequiturs.” 

Ren has no response to this. He walks around Hux and examines the food cart that’s just been delivered. He’s still nude, hair damp and finger-combed. Hux has to remind himself, when he’s tempted to preen inwardly about how the Supreme Leader falls asleep in his arms, that Ren doesn’t actually trust him, not even enough to be open about matters to do with the Force, Snoke, the crystals, or anything else he thinks is above Hux’s pay grade. Even sleeping in Hux’s bed means nothing about trust, as Ren’s Force-attuned senses would snap him awake if a threat approached. It’s happened before.

Not for the first time, Hux considers that his most realistic chance to get rid of Ren is to someday get him drunk. Ren would have to be willing. Tricking him into consuming something he didn’t want would never work. That’s the position Hux is in, still: needing to make Ren not just want him but want to trust him. Ren is no fool, for all his madness. It’s an equation Hux hasn’t even come close to figuring out. 

“Your energy is exhausting,” Ren mutters, chewing on a piece of pickled spiralstalk that he plucked from one of their plates. “Never at ease unless there’s a cock up your ass. Or a tongue.” 

“And you’re so easygoing outside of bed. Shut up. Put something on, you know how I feel about your cock being out when we’re eating.” 

“Yes, I know all of your feelings about my cock.” 

_I know all of your feelings_ , Ren might as well be saying, and he holds Hux’s gaze to make sure he knows this is a threat, or at least a warning. Hux shrugs and points to the bedroom. 

“This shall be a civilized meal,” Hux says, hoping to change the subject. “Pretend you have some manners and put on at least one article of clothing.” 

“I suppose it is our anniversary,” Ren says.

He smirks at the expression that leaps onto Hux’s face. So this is why Hux has found himself thinking throughout the day that it’s been a full year now: Ren has had it on his mind, and the bond has passed it on to Hux like a greeting card.

Ren leaves the room and returns wearing his black training pants and a sleeveless tank. Hux is seated at the table, having no idea how to handle that remark about an anniversary. It was a joke, surely, and a dark one, considering how they began, when Hux’s back was still aching from Ren having tossed him across the command bridge on Crait. 

The silence that settles over them as they reach for their utensils is awkward for Hux, and apparently amusing for Ren. Hux can feel Ren’s smug sense of being entertained with himself more vividly than most things, through the bond. Ren knew that comment about an anniversary would rattle Hux, and that it would bring color to his cheeks. Hux can feel it there, warm across the bridge of his nose. 

“I’d ask if you got me a gift,” Hux says, keeping his eyes on the cut of tenderloin he’s slicing into, “But I know exactly what you would say in response.” 

“What would I say, Hux.” 

“That what you just gave me in bed was your gift to me. Your load.” 

“My load!” Ren is delighted, beaming. His eyes are still mean when Hux looks up at him, or maybe just mischievous. 

“Is that not what you call it?” Hux asks, chewing. He’s picked up a few of Ren’s bad habits since becoming his regular dinner companion. 

Ren just smirks. He hasn’t sliced into his own dinner yet, is just holding his knife and fork and looking at Hux like his squirming attempt to field Ren’s weirdness is the real meal here. 

“I can’t imagine trying to give you a gift,” Ren says. “Sounds like hell.” 

“What? Why?” 

“Because you’d be a fucking jerk about it.” 

“I would not, what are you talking about?”

“I can just picture the disappointed sneer. So clearly. Even if somebody gave you a sun.” 

“Ridiculous.” 

Hux can’t recall ever getting a gift from anyone, so can’t offer up examples of how graciously he’s received them or not. He’s also not sure why he should be flattered by this conversation, and, like anything Ren does that flatters him, he considers this a red flag that warrants extra attention paid to whatever comes next. 

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” Hux says. “Presuming that nothing you could do would be well-received, so doing nothing.” 

He regrets saying this at once, and keeps his eyes on his food. It came out sounding too much like some kind of metaphorical insinuation, but he didn’t intend it to be. He can feel Ren staring at him, and when he hears his comm go off in the next room he leaps out of his chair with relief, ready for whatever distraction it will provide. 

“What are you doing?” Hux snaps when he feels the Force halting his steps, holding him in place in mid-stride and making his heart lurch into his throat. He’s able to turn his head, at least, to glare at Ren. “Let me go, that’s my comm!” 

“I know. Come and eat a little more first. Before you run back to work.” 

“Fuck eating, that’s a command call!” 

“But not an emergency one.” Ren raises his eyebrows as if to dare Hux to show surprise that he’s bothered to note what the different comm codes sound like. “Sit,” he says, drawing Hux into his lap with the Force. “Just two bites. Then you can answer it.” 

Hux wants to bite Ren’s nose off, his face burning now. Ren’s eyes are dark and humorless, as if he’s not only doing this because he thinks it’s funny to make Hux bend to his will with the Force. 

“Thought you’d started to like it,” Ren says, releasing him. “When I--”

Ren swallows the rest of whatever he was going to say and reaches around Hux for the hunk of buttered bread on his plate. Hux is shaking. He should get up, but his legs feel as if they might not support him. He had begun to enjoy sliding across the floor after coming through the door, pulled into Ren’s arms by the Force, but he was always expecting that. Being taken off guard by a Force hold is still enough to make his bones freeze in dread. 

“Here,” Ren says, and he lifts the bread to Hux’s lips as if his arms are still restrained. Hux flexes his fingers, then his shoulders, to make sure they are not. “Just one bite,” Ren says, bumping the bread against Hux’s mouth. “Then you can go.” 

Hux’s comm is still blaring in the bedroom. He’s not sure what to make of this moment, what the smartest move is. Appeasing Ren seems foolish, but storming off would spoil the mood and eradicate any hope of easing anything useful out of Ren for the remainder of the evening. 

So he opens his mouth and takes a bite of the bread, glaring at Ren. He’s still glaring while he chews it, eyes locked with Ren’s. 

“Good,” Ren says, softly. He seems cowed, and puts his hand on Hux’s waist like he’s afraid it might be slapped away. “Good boy,” he says, more thickly. 

Without thinking about it, Hux takes another bite of the bread. His face is so hot. He can feel his nipples hardening against the robe. That phrase shouldn’t still be so effective. He should force Ren to come up with some new material.

“You’re an idiot,” Hux says after he’s swallowed. He stands without looking at Ren again, only unsteady on his feet for a moment before he hurries into the bedroom to answer his comm.

“Sir,” Peavey says, and his anxious tone reveals plenty already. “There has been a development with the Yrai’li contingent. I thought you would want to know at once.”

“Of course I do. What’s happened?” 

“They’ve made a demand, sir, and have not been responsive to our attempts to refuse negotiation.” 

“Negotiation for what?” 

“A meeting, sir. They demand an audience with the Supreme Leader.” 

Hux groans, forgetting to turn off the sound on his comm before doing so. There is almost nothing worse that these people could ask for, and there is no other faction in the galaxy that is positioned to make such a demand, only this one. The Yrai’li are the highly weaponized culture that used to sell their weapons to Katalon, whom they also considered a close ally. They’ve been threatening a war against the First Order since Ren destroyed Katalon, and while they would have no hope of winning such a war, it would be a costly business to stamp them out, and would also make the Order look bad during a sensitive time in galactic history. They’re preparing for the one-year recognition of Ren’s rise to power, which will involve public ceremonies intended to present the image that all is going well. The timing of the Yrai’li demand is no coincidence. 

“I shall have to field a call with them myself,” Hux decides, dreading it. 

“Sir, they are refusing to continue further communication with anyone but Supreme Leader himself. At present.” 

“Good,” Ren says, startling Hux. He’s come into the doorway to eavesdrop on the call he pretended to be so disinterested in when forcing Hux to eat bread. “Tell the Yrai’li they can have their meeting,” he says, walking closer.

“Sir?” Peavey says. Hux wants to strangle Peavey for his tone, and Ren, too. “Is that-- Am I speaking to the Supreme Leader, sir?”

“Yes, he’s here,” Hux snaps before Ren can answer for him. “But that’s-- We’ll continue to discuss this development--”

“No,” Ren says. “We won’t. Captain Peavey, ready a ship for myself and the Grand Marshal. Two of my Knights will accompany us, and a stormtrooper contingent will follow us in a standard transport. One of the elite squadrons.” 

“Yes, sir.” Peavey has the nerve to sound relieved, as if this isn’t an insane whim that lacks strategic thought. “Right away.” 

The call ends. Hux doesn’t want to look at Ren. He can feel Ren’s smugness radiating, and something else, too, a lingering awkward need to pull Hux into his lap and not be snarled at for wanting him there. 

“This is a terrible precedent,” Hux says, gathering himself up to face Ren. “We cannot meet with them.” 

“The tension between us and them has not gone away in a year, since Katalon. If we come to war with them, so be it. We can crush them, as you know.” 

“Yes, but--”

“I want to meet with them face to face before it comes to that, either way. This is good.” 

“Ren-- Sir, you haven’t had much experience with these people, or with any people but your own--” 

“You underestimate me. I don’t make decisions lightly.” 

More like recklessly, Hux barely stops himself from saying. He’s thinking of Crait, and Snoke, and whatever else Ren did when he was burning all those New Republic bridges on his way to the Order.

Ren’s eye twitches. Hux keeps his face completely still. His teeth are grit together, lips pressed in a line, and his heart is slamming. They’re all still in the orbit of Ren’s whims, and there is nothing Hux hates less than giving in to an unworthy opponent’s demands. 

“I do have a present for you,” Ren says. “Something I think you’ll truly appreciate. Something you certainly need.” 

“What,” Hux spits out, “We’re not scurrying down to meet the Yrai’li at once? There’s time for exchanging gifts?” 

“Peavey is readying the ship, and I intend to sleep before we go. You should, too. Let me help you.” 

“Help me,” Hux repeats dully, vibrating with rage. 

“Yes.”

Ren sits on the bed and scoots back until he’s propped against the headboard, long legs spread out in front of him. He pats his thigh, eyes locked with Hux’s. 

“Come here,” Ren says, soft with menace. “If you’ll accept my gift.” 

Hux stands and stares. He needs a moment to get off this ride and let his head clear, but he knows that moment is not forthcoming. There are no breaks. Worse, too: he knows what Ren is offering, and he wants it. His cock twitches at the thought of surrendering to that, right now, in the calm before the coming storm. 

“We should talk about what we’re going to do,” Hux says. “What do you know about the Yrai’li?”

“Enough. Come to me, or leave me to sleep. I knew you’d turn your nose up at any gift.” 

Hux kneels onto the bed, half just to prove him wrong. This is how Ren manipulates him, so masterfully that Hux has a grudging respect for him that’s real. He tries again to remember someone giving him a gift, anything that he didn’t have to get on his knees, in one way or another, to earn. The closest he can come to conjuring what receiving a gift might have felt like is a vague memory of his mother letting him take a star made out of sugar from the tray of them she’d made for some upstairs banquet and winking at him while he kept his mouth closed around it. They had smiled at each other, both closed-lipped, as it dissolved on his tongue. 

Ren’s face is strange when Hux comes to rest in his lap, his bent knees spread around Ren’s sides. Ren’s thighs shuffle apart a bit more widely, and Hux feels himself start to harden. 

“This is important,” Hux says. “This meeting--”

“I know. Let me help you get the rest you need beforehand. I will need your counsel, Grand Marshal.” 

Hux feels a preening thing expand in his chest. He lowers his gaze when Ren’s big hands come to his sides, prodding him to get into position. 

They don’t do this often. Hux doesn’t often want it, but when he does, Ren always seems to know. There are many downsides to Ren’s ability to read him, but this is not one of them. 

Hux hears himself making petulant huffing noises as he settles over Ren’s lap, face down against the mussed sheets, his robe already sliding up his back to expose the swell of his arse. He sucks in his breath when Ren caresses him there, his palm warm and expansive over Hux’s exposure, his vulnerability. 

“There,” Ren says, stroking over Hux’s crack with his thumb, teasing. “Ready for your present?”

“Yes,” Hux says, shifting his legs apart. He’s so hard already. “Please, thank you.” 

He knew a rare _thank you_ would get Ren going, and he can feel Ren start to harden underneath him, against his trembling belly. It’s extremely ridiculous that they’re doing this now, but Ren is not wrong. It will help Hux sleep. He lets himself moan for the first heavy slap of Ren’s hand. The pleasure of it rises so fast to meet the sting, crashing against it with a wave of impact that corresponds perfectly to next hard slap, this one landing against his other arse cheek. 

“Good,” Ren says, his voice thick and his dick throbbing against Hux’s belly for the way Hux’s breath quickens, the way his shoulders relax, or whatever Ren enjoys about this. “That’s good,” Ren says, rubbing his palm over Hux’s already burning skin. The whole point of this, as near to Hux can come to finding one, is that it gives Ren an excuse to say how good Hux is, over and over, and for Hux to hear it and melt into Ren’s lap until he’s close to believing that he’s doing so well, that he’s just perfect here.

Even Phasma would have said this was fucked up. Sometimes she and Hux had talked dryly about things she’d caught the stormtroopers doing together: weird rituals, half intimacy and half deep alienation from it. Hux thinks sometimes that he’s quite like them, and that he takes good care of them therefore. He’s wondered what would become of him if he worked in close proximity with those crystals, what sort of steep walls he might try to run up, how his bones might sing. 

They’re singing now, or maybe it’s more the shuddering muscle of his arse and the flaming skin across his cheeks. Ren soothes just as often as he strikes, pushing Hux’s robe up so he can rub Hux’s bare back with his other hand while he murmurs praise that sounds like evidence of his own pleasure, coming from a place deep inside him and trembling a bit on his lips. 

“So good,” Ren says, and he sounds authentically amazed, like Hux is doing back flips for him and not just lying across his lap and whimpering for more, lifting his arse to meet every blow. “My sturdy little soldier. How many more can you take?”

“I don’t know,” Hux says, his breath hitching when he turns his face against the sheets again, embarrassed by the shake in his voice. “Anything, all of it. Don’t stop.” 

He never counts when they do this. As far as he knows, neither does Ren. When Hux’s noises change, becoming softer and more strained, Ren reaches down to run two fingertips along the length of his leaking dick, then up again, smearing precome along the shaft. Hux cries out and bucks, presenting his arse, spreading his legs, as if he can submit more completely, as if there’s anywhere to go from here but to pieces. 

“So good for me,” Ren says, stroking him again, still with just two fingers. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Hux says, muffled, desperate. He twitches his hips, just short of dragging his throbbing dick against Ren’s thigh. 

“My obedient soldier.” Ren is playing with the tip of Hux’s cock now, spreading precome with his thumb. “Will you come for me now?”

“Please,” Hux says, nodding. He can feel tears at the corners of his eyes, hot and streaming, he’s not sure when those got there. “Sir, yes, please--” 

He didn’t even intend to mix a _sir_ in there. He’s lost to this, squirming and hot all over. Ren palms his arse again and takes a deep breath. He exhales slowly and closes his hand around Hux’s cock, pumps him just once. 

“Good,” Ren says, so soft, almost under his breath. His other hand is open on Hux’s back, between his shoulder blades, where sweat has gathered. “You can come for me now. That will be your gift for me. In return for all I’ve done for you. Show me, Hux. Let me see.” 

He pumps Hux’s cock again, faster, firmer, pressing down on his back with the other hand. Hux sobs when he comes, legs jerking out behind him, feet scrambling against the bed until he goes limp, his mouth so wet that he’s left a humid little puddle on the sheets. He turns his cheek away from it and breathes, eyes closed, while Ren strokes every drop out, until Hux whines and flinches for being too oversensitive, completely spent. Ren releases him then, his hand soothing over Hux’s tender arse cheeks while he comes back to himself. 

“Are you dropping straight into sleep,” Ren asks, sounding proud, “Or do you want another, uh. Load. From me.” 

Ren shifts his hips up to remind Hux how hard he is. Hux moans and gets up onto his elbows, moving slowly, then onto his hands and knees. He slides out of Ren’s lap and lets Ren kiss his drowsy, blush-stained face. It’s so embarrassing, this, and so good. He lets himself cling to Ren’s shoulders, then decides he needs to alter the mood. 

“I’ll fuck that load out of you,” Hux says, faux sweet. “If you like.” 

“You think you can make me come with your dick?” Ren is grinning, showing one canine. He seems authentically amused by the proposal. Hux yawns, nodding. “I think you can barely hold your head up,” Ren says. “Let alone mount me.” 

“It will help you sleep.” Hux gives Ren a sharper, knowing look. “Usually that works best, mhmm?” 

Ren kisses him as if he’s impressed. Hux laughs into it and holds Ren’s hair with both hands while they kiss, pulling a little. A moment ago he’d been ready to kill Ren, sure that his rash decision-making would spoil everything, and also there was the matter of being Force-yanked into Ren’s lap, which Hux is still angry about. But all of that can wait. He needs these respites. He can’t always be running at full speed, counting his grievances. And he can’t deny that Ren keeps him feeling well-tended, emptied out of tension, sort of strangely _known_ for what he really is, in a way that’s pleasing, even if it shouldn’t be. 

“On your back,” Hux says, pushing on Ren’s chest. “I’ll fuck you right to sleep, you’ll see.” 

He ends up needing to use his hand to actually get Ren off, but Ren isn’t complaining or even teasing after he’s come all over himself with Hux still inside him. Hux’s own orgasm is weak, tired; he doesn’t like thrusting into Ren half as much as the reverse, but it’s still amazing to witness how much Ren likes it, somehow always a surprise. 

“Don’t shower again,” Ren says, holding onto Hux’s arms when he pulls out. “I want you to smell like me when we’re with them.”

“I’m going to at least clean my dick off,” Hux says, tugging free. The spell is broken by the reminder of their forthcoming trip to Yrai’li. He probably should have dropped straight into sleep after being spanked and not reawakened himself by doing the work of getting Ren off. Of course doing so had seemed like Hux’s idea at the time. 

“Do you think they know about us,” Ren calls when Hux is in the fresher, washing his hands and then his cock. 

“Who?” Hux asks, though he’s afraid he knows.

“The Yrai’li leaders. Do they read the unauthorized press about us, I wonder. Those stories.”

Hux sneers at his reflection in the mirror. He’s picked up that Ren likes being talked about in the press, and of course he would. The gossip about them is that Hux is Ren’s boot-licking lover, a kind of all-purpose servant. It’s too close to the truth for Hux to find it quite so amusing as Ren does. 

“Now you’ve spoiled my good mood,” Hux says, coming into the doorway to direct his admonishing stare at Ren. “I thought you wanted me to sleep.” 

“Come here.” Ren pats the bed, beckoning. “I only mean we could have some fun with this.” 

“Ren, it’s not meant to be fun--”

“Shh, fuck, you’re so predictable. I knew you’d say that.” 

“Yes, right, you know everything, but the point is that this is delicate, I don’t want the expense of a war with these people, and I don’t mean financially. I don’t want my people needlessly doing battle against this faction, it’s beneath us--” 

“I predict the meeting will go well.” 

“I’m sure you do. They’ll love you, especially, as allies to the late Katalon.” 

“Katalon kidnapped you,” Ren says, his expression darkening. “I did what I had to.” 

Hux’s shoulders sink at the reminder that he’s as much to blame for the annihilation of Katalon as Ren. He drops into the bed somewhat defeated and holds out his hand to keep Ren at bay when he tries to come close. 

“Leave me be,” Hux says. “I’ll sleep better if you’re not hunched around me.” 

“I wasn’t going to hunch.” 

Ren turns over and drags his pillow against his face, leaving enough room between him and Hux for a third person.  

Hux lies there fuming until suddenly he’s waking, having slipped into unexpectedly deep sleep. Ren is moving about the dark room, getting dressed. Without a word, not wanting to be prodded by Ren to take action, Hux begins to do the same. From the corner of his eye he notices that Ren has put on the same cape and clasp that Hux complimented the day before. 

Then they are walking together to the command shuttle bay in silence, somehow doing this: with no real discussion or plan, coming when called by a lesser power. It’s not Ren’s style at all, which means he must have some ulterior motive. Quite possibly that motive is just Hux’s discomfort and Ren’s enjoyment of it. Hux wants to appeal to a higher authority, wants to go running into a throne room to breathlessly protest, his finger pointed at Ren, but there is no throne except for the one that is under construction down on Duron, made of polished gilbeast bones. There is nothing but Ren, and nothing to do now but trail after him.

Hux has known this for a year. It should not continue to come as a shock, and yet.

Seeing the Knights who are waiting for them in the bay is a relief, at least. Ren has appointed Sabin and Farnik to accompany them. It’s an interesting choice, as according to Hux’s observation these two are the most vicious fighters, and if Hux was in the mood to speak to Ren he might ask if their selection doesn’t belie a lack of confidence in this meeting going well after all. 

Hux says nothing. Everything feels a bit dreamlike, as if he’s being wheeled along on a track and he might as well just keep his seat and watch the scenery. It’s a panic-inducing sensation, but his current panic feels remote, like something that is stumbling behind for now and will sprint ahead to catch up with him later. 

“You have your orders,” Ren says, addressing his Knights. They’re both masked, as usual. This has been a boon with the people’s perception of Ren, too. It makes him seem extra-special, that he’s the only unmasked one, the single human face of this mystic strength. 

“Might I ask what my orders are,” Hux says, speaking low enough that only Ren and the Knights will hear. Hux doesn’t have any strong feelings about Farnik one way or the other, but Sabin tends to be his favorite Knight in the sense that she questions Ren most often, usually with good reason, and he’s glad for the opportunity make a sarcastic remark at Ren in her presence. 

“You have your usual orders,” Ren says. He doesn’t like it when Hux shows disrespect for him in front of the Knights. Hux is pleased to have done something Ren doesn’t like, at present. “Follow my lead and advise as necessary.” 

“I have some advice right now, in fact.”

“Save it. We’re going. Leaving this situation to continue to fester has gone on for too long. I’m ready to face these people on their terms. We’ve nothing to lose here.” 

Hux has to stop himself from shouting: how the hell can you believe that?

It seems at times like their entire empire is only a distraction for Ren, a momentary sideshow while he waits to find his real prize. He would rather be in miserable combat with his enemies than ruling comfortably. It makes Hux wonder what Ren would be like without the girl and his mother to chase after, what he would dream about then, and how quickly he’d be bored by his own success in destroying them. He seeks to create more problems if things start going too smoothly. He’s the same with Hux. As soon as they begin to settle into a comfortable space together, Ren will rile Hux intentionally, or remind him where he really stands. Such as now. 

“Do you sense any Force users?” Farnik asks when they’re approaching Yrai’li, their shuttle beginning to shake as they enter atmo over the glittering capital city. 

“Not from this distance,” Ren says. “Anyone truly powerful would at least be a flicker by now.”

“You’re concerned about powerful Force users lurking about?” Hux says, looking back at Sabin for an answer. He doesn’t get the impression she likes him much, but she sees him as a counterpart to Ren, so she usually answers his direct questions. 

“Not especially concerned,” Sabin says. “But the Yrai’li know that Master Kylo can use the Force. If they invited him into their territory, they might have prepared for his arrival with some level of Force-wielders present to keep control of the situation.” 

“This culture doesn’t teach or speak about the Force,” Ren says, his gaze still focused on the front viewport. “But they have weaponized it in the past, in secret. Disastrous experiments with kyber, and programs to enslave Force users as weapons for their armies.” 

“You’ve done your research,” Hux says, surprised. 

“I have been longing to engage with them,” Ren says, inscrutable and still staring straight ahead. 

The brilliant light of morning on the planet’s surface seems to wake Hux fully at last, and he feels a shiver go through him. It’s not entirely unpleasant. Ren wanted to act, and so here they are, already. It’s gone very poorly before, this barreling ahead. But the air here smells sweet, and the faint chill of the early hour contrasts with the warmth from the sun in a way that makes Hux feel optimistic about the power that strides beside and behind him: Ren and his Knights. Hux hasn't felt a part of any subgroup since the Academy, when he had bawdy adventures with cadets who later became his rivals, then his enemies. It’s intoxicating, falling into ranks with people who could protect him with their allegiance, even if this is temporary, too. 

The stormtroopers’ shuttle landed alongside theirs, and Hux feels confident with their boots marching behind him, the sound of their orderly numbers a comfort. Armed Yrai’li guards await them ahead on the landing pad, the only dignitary present a pinched-face diplomat Hux recognizes from previous negotiations. 

The Yrai’li are a stout, strong-looking people, completely hairless and armored with a very thick, scale-like skin that has made clothing in their culture more decorative than functional. Even this diplomat wears no sleeves on his form-fitting tunic, and open shoes that show all four toes on his broad feet. His name is Tiba, and he demonstrably does not like Hux, who was tasked speaking to him via a few fruitless holo calls. 

“Supreme Leader Kylo,” Tiba says, addressing only him. “The queen is appreciative of your visit. She invites you to partake of a midday meal with our high court.” 

“I accept,” Ren says, stone-faced. 

Hux wants to groan, though Ren hasn’t done anything wrong yet. It’s just that all of this feels like some kind of unbearably self-aware theater, like so much of Hux’s life in the past year. 

Tiba doesn’t deign to address Hux or the Knights. He turns, signals to his guards, and asks Ren to please follow him to the palace. 

It is a proper palace, and very different from the one Hux has helped design for Ren. All of the capital city is beautiful, like most locations on Yrai’li. Their reputation as weapons manufacturers for whichever power is currently in control of the galaxy has made them wealthy, and their culture is accordingly indulgent, everything gilded. 

Hux is not surprised that their meeting with the queen will take place during a meal: a _lunch_ , even! Brendol would be horrified, which almost makes Hux like the idea of sitting down at midday and eating with his hands while Queen Huup lectures Ren about his leadership style. 

The stormtroopers are not allowed to enter the palace gates. Hux expected this, and Ren accepts it with a nod. The troopers are made to wait at the end of the long road that leads to the palace, standing in neat rows with their blasters across their chests, as if those will save them if this encounter goes poorly and a canon emerges from the palace wall to mow them down. Hux feels an ache of unwelcome sympathy for these particular troopers as he leaves them behind, as if they represent some part of himself that he must set aside during the rest of this experience. 

“I hope you have come hungry,” Tiba says, again speaking only to Ren. “We have prepared a feast to acknowledge the significance of your visit.” 

Ren says nothing. Hux almost admires him, though maybe staying cold will prove unwise. They are not yet in the presence of the queen, and even she could not claim to be Ren’s equal. 

_That’s right_ , Hux thinks, in Tiba’s direction. _He doesn’t have to answer your tedious remarks. You’re bold to even address the Order’s leader_. 

_Calm down_ , Hux hears in response, from Ren. 

_I am calm. I haven’t said a word_.

 _Perhaps you have some lingering resentment toward your captors from Katalon that you are projecting onto the Yrai’li_.

Hux makes no response, his nose twitching. Ren loves to dare him to finally say out loud that the kidnapping plot was his own. He’s probably enjoying this mostly for that reason: Hux brought them here, in a sense, for pinning his abduction on Katalon. Hux wants to protest that things were different then, that his back was against a wall and Ren himself had put it there. But it’s not as if they’re actually having this conversation, even only in their heads, and Hux never plans to. He’ll go to his grave insisting that Katalon kidnapped him, to annoy Ren if nothing else.

The interior of the Yrai’li palace makes Hux long to have theirs completed. He has some trepidation about what will happen when it is, but the sight of the grand hallways and soaring ceilings makes him think of his own plans and how they’re coming to life so slowly, in part because of the delicacy of building around the caves. Hux does like the idea that the kyber deposits will form the foundation of their residence on Duron. None of the glorious surroundings they pass through on the way to the Yrai’li court’s dining room can compare with the sight of that kyber crystal that stretches out below the planet’s surface, or the way it feels to hear the faint _tink tink_ of it as it regrows around the portions that have been removed, handfuls of the stuff that they’ve sold to power whole settlements in the Outer Rim, where development is already booming due to their contributions. 

_This place is making you giddy_ , Ren says, and not for the first time Hux is both annoyed that he can speak directly into Hux’s mind and very glad that they have this ability to hold side conversations in certain company. _Keep watch, I need your eyes, too_. 

_Forgive me, Supreme Leader_ , Hux returns, hoping that Ren will catch the sarcastic disdain in his tone. _I assure you, my eyes are open. So gracious of you to admit that you need me, meanwhile_. 

_I tell you I need you all the time_. 

Hux dares a bewildered glance at Ren as the doors of the court’s dining room are pulled open for them. Of course that’s not true. Is it? No. Ren doesn’t deign to acknowledge Hux’s incredulous stare. 

The royal dining room is admittedly impressive. Water features cascade gently from all four glittering walls, which are made from some pinkish, marble-like material Hux can’t identify. It gives a bit of an impression of eating inside the belly of a giant sea creature that has swallowed up the whole court, but this effect is offset by the massive doors that stand open to the gardens outside. 

Hux occasionally catches himself feeling dazzled by displays of great wealth. Snoke once impressed him this way. He has to guard himself from being authentically moved by any of it: it’s all posturing, often wasteful, and by no means a demonstration of a person’s or a culture’s actual worth. 

Still, he feels a certain amount of pride at being invited here as an even wealthier power than Yrai’li, thanks to the kyber crystals and to the late Supreme Leader Snoke. Ren could have a palace like this, if he liked. Theirs will be more dignified in its restraint, however, with the possible exception of the bone throne. 

Queen Huup is very old but still robust in appearance, with a snarling expression that manages to convey constant amusement alongside what Hux presumes is authentic rage about her ally being destroyed. 

“I wanted to hear in person,” she says when all are seated. “The explanation the Katalon gave you for taking your General hostage. For creating this mess that brings us here today.” 

“He’s the Grand Marshal now,” Ren says, managing to mock Hux even as he corrects his title. It’s in his tone, or the way he was focused on reaching for a wedge of buttered lav bread as he mentioned that detail. 

“We understand that,” Huup says. “But he was only General at the time, yes?”

“Our leadership under Supreme Leader Snoke was dysfunctional,” Ren says, casual and still not meeting anyone’s gaze. Hux feels his face flaming already. He wants to object to something nonspecific, to all of this, but the queen hasn’t appealed to him directly and it would be against protocol for him to speak before she has. 

“Was Snoke not dead by the time the Katalon’s launched their plot?” Huup asks, eyes narrowing. 

Ren looks up at her then, finally, and Hux partly understands why he hesitated until now. It’s like a bargaining chip, Ren’s attention. He never gives of it easily, so those who finally have it always feel like they’ve already won something from him.

“Snoke was dead,” Ren says. “But it took us some time to parse and reestablish the successive leadership, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Seems straightforward enough to me,” Huup says, her tone conveying that she believes, like most in the galaxy, that only Ren could have killed Snoke, or at least played a part in his demise so that he could take the throne. “You were his apprentice, were you not.” 

“Yes.” Ren holds her gaze now. “And I promoted valuable personnel to positions of power in the aftermath. Hux being one of them. Katalon understood his importance, and the command he holds over our forces. They knew they were not powerful enough to take me captive, so they attacked my second in command to try to stir chaos. My decision to destroy them was swift, but not unconsidered. You must understand the value of making a statement as a new leader.” 

Hux is floored by several things in the immediate aftermath of this speech. He spoons spicy-brothed soup into his mouth rapidly, to account for his burning face. Ren’s speeches are curt but to the point. Hux has noticed this before and is only mildly surprised by his eloquence here. Far more shocking is that Ren referred to Hux as his second in command. That’s a fact of life, undeniable, but also something Hux never imagined Ren would admit aloud. 

“A lot of damage to do for one man,” Huup says, her gaze flicking to Hux before returning pointedly to Ren’s. “However important he is to your armies.” 

Ren shrugs one shoulder and takes a slurping spoonful of his soup. “He’s also my companion,” he says, stirring the broth. “It was therefore a personal insult. I make no apologies for responding to those without mercy.” 

Hux lowers his spoon as calmly as he can and reaches under the table to pinch himself very hard. He’s awake, it seems. And anyway his dreams have never been like this.

Huup is watching Ren, almost smirking. It means nothing, from her: she’s always almost smirking. Hux’s heart is racing as he considers the implications of what Ren has said based on what Hux knows of Yrai’li culture, their status in this segment, the many and complex reasons for this in-person meeting. He imagines his heart beating in time with all of this troopers held hostage outside the gates, waiting to see if their young Supreme Leader will say the right things and save them, or cast them to the wind on a whim. 

“I am the same,” Huup says, leaning back in her massive, glittering chair. “And in truth, Supreme Leader Ren, you did us a good turn in the sense that almost all of Katalon’s manufacturing contracts are now ours.” 

“You’ve no need of allies like Katalon if you’re no longer fighting the Order,” Ren says, as if he missed that she just offered him a concession. Trust Ren to discount the importance of financial gain. “I hope you will understand my presence here as a demonstration of your value as a part of our empire.” 

“We are waiting to know the terms of being covered by that particular umbrella,” Huup says, the smirk finally draining from her eyes. 

“Things will remain just as they are now.” Ren spoons more soup into his mouth. The heat of it has made his lips red and slightly puffy. “We have no plans to tax you unfairly or replace your armies with our own.” 

“No plans at present,” Huup says. “While you amass even more wealth and strength. Your empire is fearsome but young, Supreme Leader.” 

“You speak to me so casually,” Ren says, laughing under his breath. He’s looking down at his soup, menace radiating like a cold wind. “As if we could not destroy you, too, if we chose.” 

“I did not invite you here to defer and beg,” Huup says. “You presume that of us regardless.” 

“You risk your people’s lives on the belief that I’m not a reckless madman. More than a few sources would claim that I am.” 

“You look like a boy to me,” Huup says. “But then,” she adds when Ren lifts his eyes to hers, “I have seen boys shatter the galaxy before. Of course we fear your strength. We have tried to control Force users in the past.” 

“And failed,” Ren says tightly, still staring. 

“Indeed. I make no excuses for those failures, which we have learned from. In that sense it is a particular honor to welcome you, Supreme Leader. You partake of our customs, we host you, a relationship is formed. Part of that is what you refer to as my casualness. I have no time for false pretenses. I would die before dishonoring myself with showing respect that had not been earned.” 

“A dangerous position,” Ren says. He’s visibly calmed, and everyone in the room seems to have regained their ability to breathe, though still shallowly and without moving. “My mother is much the same,” Ren says: lightly, as if everyone here knows who she is. “My grandfather was, too, in his own way.” 

Hux starts to reach for Ren under the table, to give him some indistinct but critical warning, and only then does he realize what’s happened, the already gaudy colors in the room beginning to sharpen and buzz at the edges of his vision. Yrai’li frequently ‘spice’ their food with drugs intended to increase pleasure and decrease inhibition. But it’s impossible, unless Ren was complicit in his drugging. Ren must have known. 

And Ren is now talking in public about his mother and Darth Vader. So Ren must be drugged, too. 

“I don’t think you and I are so unalike, Supreme Leader,” Huup says, already bolder. She must have seen Ren’s pupils dilate, or maybe it’s the increasingly grandiose tone replacing his usual stoic confidence that gave it away. Ren is no lightweight, but he’s a complete novice in the world of even mild inebriation, as far as Hux knows, and the dose is such that Hux, no stranger to recreational partaking when the setting is appropriate, is already feeling the impulse to laugh, though nothing about this is funny. 

_Ren_ , Hux thinks, desperate to grasp at the bond but already feeling like he can’t keep his own senses straight, let alone the threads tied to Ren’s. _Ren, something’s wrong. They’ve done something, the food--_

 _I know_. Ren’s response comes hard and fast in Hux’s mind, punching a half-swallowed exclamation of surprise out of him. _I knew they would do this. It’s fine. I can control it. This is the whole point of our visit, in their view_.

 _I don’t understand_. 

_You will, just let me work_.

Ren touches Hux’s thigh under the table, and the way he squeezes it seems to indicate he’s already letting his control slip, just not realizing it. Hux almost groans in dread. He stuffs some greasy bread into his mouth to gag himself, and in the faint hope that only the soup was dosed. Yrai’li have extremely high tolerances and might not even consider this an attack. Hux turns as discreetly as he can to check that Sabin and Farnik are still standing behind them, weapons sheathed but close at hand. He tries to keep his focus on their reassuring presence while a panicked giddiness tingles across the back of his neck. 

“All leaders are alike in some ways,” Ren says, back to that grandiose tone. “My mother viewed leadership as a responsibility and a burden. Well.” Ren blows a breath out through his parted lips, which have grown wet. “I should say, views. As she is, to my knowledge, still alive.” 

Huup laughs. It sounds cruel only for a moment: her eyes are glittering when she smiles at Ren, her wine goblet tilting in her hand. Hux hasn’t dared a sip from his own, and he wants to protest when Ren lifts his to join her invitation to toast. 

“Despite my age,” Huup says. “I admire young leaders who command great strength.” 

“Then you did not admire Snoke,” Ren says. 

“No,” Huup says. “Not especially.” 

They drink to that in near-perfect synchronization. Hux cannot even imagine what sort of look he has on his face. He’s gripped both arms of his chair very tightly, and feels like he might float out of it and up to the ceiling if he releases them, though he’s only mildly high. It’s more the sensation of being high in this company that is making him feel like he’s going to blast apart at the seams. 

“I hope you were prepared to feast with us,” Huup says as she watches Ren gulp down the remainder of his wine. His goblet is refilled by a servant as soon as he sets it down. “Our midday meal involves a dusting of spice when we welcome guests.” 

“Yes,” Ren says, nodding slowly. In an incriminating fashion, Hux thinks, staring. “I know.” 

“Force users know everything, eventually. We learned that the hard way.” 

“I did grave injury to those who attempted to co-opt my own powers for their agenda,” Ren says. He keeps reaching for more food, putting it on his plate, but he’s stopped eating. 

“I have learned from history,” Huup says. “I stand by in respect of the power you have, Supreme Leader, and the gesture of your presence on our planet is deeply felt by all my subjects. I invited you here in the hopes that you would see the pleasure in not removing yourself from all you rule over the way that Snoke did.” 

“Snoke,” Ren says, muttering. He grabs a piece of bread and tears into it with his teeth, says nothing more on the matter.

“Ren,” Hux says, softly. Without meaning to. Ren’s hand is still on his thigh, under the table. 

“We have prepared chambers for you to rest in after the meal,” Huup says. “You can enjoy our splendid sunset if you like, and then perhaps you will be so gracious as to cross a ceremonial bridge with me under the stars, a ritual that represents allyship. One we once undertook with Katalon.” 

“I’m not in the habit of making allies of the planets I rule over,” Ren says. 

“Certainly, and it is only a symbolic gesture. Perhaps you will decide to indulge me or not during the course of the day. You are enjoying the meal, I hope?”

Ren breathes out through his nose and looks down at his plate. Again, incriminating, and the court is silent, awaiting his response. From the corner of his eye, Hux sees Farnik’s gloved hand twitch.

 _No!_ Ren sends to him, so powerfully that Hux hears it, too. Or perhaps Ren is sending this message indiscriminately to all those he’s connected with, control slipping. _It’s still as we discussed. Do not rob me of this test of my abilities. I am not unwell_.

“Everything is delicious,” Ren says when he lifts his head, as if he’s had an epiphany and is realizing this about some grander thing than the food itself. The entire court, surely affected by the spicing of the meal themselves at this point, cheers. 

Queen Huup is smiling, her wine goblet resting against the corner of her wide mouth. 

“I’m so pleased,” she says. “It is our great honor to bring our cultures together in tribute to all we can accomplish under your glorious reign. Let’s have a toast to the Supreme Leader’s successful first year.” She lifts her meaty hand and snaps, which for some reason makes Hux flinch. He’s not terribly high, but things are hitting him oddly, everything coming at him too fast and hard in a way that he can’t help but reconcile with how he likes other things fast and hard, the way he becomes temporarily and also dangerously absolved from anything but just taking it all in. “Bring the blood brandy,” Huup bellows, her voice seeming to echo directly into Hux’s burning ears. “Today, we’re celebrating.” 

Hux glances over at Ren, wanting desperately to exchange some secret glance, to communicate something in silence. Ren has taken up the Yrai’li custom of drinking soup straight from the bowl, which he holds with both hands as he slurps up the last of it.

Not a great sign.

Nor is the forthcoming blood brandy, which Hux would normally be salviating to sample. It’s rare, hard to come by, and if Hux had used any of the bounty of their past year of success for his own personal indulgence, he would have tried to track down a bottle or two. As it is, he has been in service entirely to the Order at all times, including those when he indulged in Ren, solely for the good of his people, who really are his, when he thinks about it, not Ren’s. Ren seeks to borrow them, to put on the veil of darkness that he was not born into, whereas Hux knows actual darkness, all its unexciting trappings that lack the drama Ren so craves--

He realizes as a servant sets a heavy glass of brandy in front of him that he is actually, unfortunately high. He should be much more alarmed by this. Even when he’s overdone it in the past he’s had a enough sense to be frightened rather than relaxing further into the experience, but it’s as if Sabin and Farnik standing at his back are providing a kind of buffer to real distress that he’s never had before while partaking alone or even with less trustworthy friends. 

Hux laughs miserably into his cup of brandy as he drinks from it, because he just thought of Ren’s Knights as trustworthy friends. But he can feel it, he would swear: through the bond, a kind of swelling of real allegiance. It almost makes tears prick at his eyes. 

The rest of the meal is a blur. Hux eats, though not as much as he wants to, knowing that every mouthful will add to the amount of spice already swirling through his bloodstream. He reaches over to grab Ren’s thigh at moments and also dares to murmur in Ren’s ear when the conversation breaks apart into groupings throughout the room, the entire company no longer focused on the exchange between Huup and Ren.

“My father would be rolling in his grave to see the Order taking a meeting like this,” Hux says, slurring this into Ren’s ear. “That is, if he, you know, had a grave, and wasn’t only a film of slime floating out in space somewhere, at best.” 

Prior to this remark, which Hux registers as nonsensical even as it is, actually, also factual, Ren had huffed warmly under his breath at Hux’s every utterance, leaning close enough to brush his ear against Hux’s lips, once even daring a brush of his nose to Hux’s cheek. Now, however, he stiffens and looks down at his plate with alarm.

 _Feeling weird_ , Ren thinks.

Hux waits for Sabin or Farnik to act. They remain stoic, motionless. 

_Are you in pain?_ Hux returns, alarm clouding his revelry. 

Ren shakes his head tightly, not in answer but as if he couldn’t make out Hux’s response through the fog of the drugs. 

“Your majesty,” Hux says, shooting out of his chair before his inhibitions can catch up with his fogged mind. “I’m afraid I need a lie down, you see, I am quite slight, and my tolerance is not high, you mentioned a place where we can rest?”

He hears all of this as if someone else is saying it, and the embarrassment of having all eyes in the room suddenly upon him reaches him slowly but does arrive. He’s also committed some level of blasphemy by speaking to the queen without her invitation, and isn’t sure how much that matters, as the Order is the actual ruling power here. He feels hot all over, especially in his cheeks. 

“We can show you to the chamber we’ve prepared,” Huup says. She looks Hux over in an obvious way, clearly amused. 

“I’ll join him,” Ren says, standing just as awkwardly as Hux did, in a rush. “He’s not to be left alone, of course.” 

Hux almost unleashes a guffaw at this, hearing it as something that implicates him as a potential traitor and not as a precious treasure in need of protecting. Everything has gone so off the rails already, their very presence here included, that it almost seems like he might as well let loose inappropriate laughter, but he’s at least still sober enough to keep it in. 

“Would you not trust one of your guards to escort him?” Huup asks. She looks like she thinks she knows the answer and finds all of this funny. Hux has to wonder why Ren would let anyone have a laugh at his expense. This planet isn’t that important. 

“He never leaves my sight,” Ren says, and then Hux does laugh, in a single bounce of his shoulders, because it’s almost true. “When we’re away from our home,” Ren adds, maybe because Hux laughed. 

“Your home,” Huup says. “You are like Snoke in the sense that you want to live aboard a ship.” 

“No,” Ren says, angrily enough that Hux hears a few people in the room draw in their breath. All Hux can think is: surely Ren isn’t high enough to divulge their plans for the fortress on Duron. But he’s not sure of that at all, or much of anything at present. 

“Forgive the presumption,” Huup says. “And yes, please, make yourself comfortable in the guest chambers we prepared. It is our custom here to rest after the midday meal, and I am nearly in need of the same myself. I hope we will see you again this evening for the ritual I mentioned.” 

“We shall see,” Ren says, still angry. He grabs Hux’s arm and holds it as one Huup’s attendants leads them from the dining room, Sabin and Farnik following. It’s not a tender gesture: Ren holds Hux as if he’s a prisoner being marched to his cell. Hux lets himself be tugged along at Ren’s side, wondering what sort of humiliating talk about them is happening in the dining room already, now that they’re out of earshot. 

Hux can hear Ren breathing. He tries not to focus on it, and to instead listen to the attendant droning on about the bridge ceremony and the view from the opulent room they’re lead to. The attendant shows them around the room, Sabin and Farnik standing at attention just inside the door and Ren oddly patient all of a sudden, posture poor, blinking slow. Hux is on the verge of telling the attendant to get the fuck out already when he finally wraps up his inane explanation of how curtains work, as if these are so different from the ones in the First Order.

“Tell me,” Ren says, pointing at Sabin as soon as the door shuts behind the attendant. “Are we being watched, in this space?” 

“I had the same suspicion,” Sabin says. She reaches up to remove her helmet, which surprises Hux. He rarely sees her without it. “But I sense nothing, master.” 

She looks to Farnik, who follows her lead by removing his own helmet. 

“I have the same sense,” he says. “These people are testing you, as you foresaw. But they know they can’t harm you even in their own territory. There is no monitoring equipment here, or hidden traps.” He seems disappointed, as if he was hoping for subterfuge and a bloody battle. 

“I don’t understand,” Hux says, and he feels like he didn’t have permission to speak when all three Force users turn to him as if they’re surprised he dared it. “You _knew_ they would spice your food?” Hux says, narrowing his eyes at Ren. “Why put yourself through this?”  

“Why put yourself through anything,” Ren says. The way he’s looking at Hux can only be described as accusing. “Except to survive it and then have that survival as a tool when you need it again.” 

“What,” Hux says, too high for this. He wants to sit, but he’s afraid to move while Sabin and Farnik stand watching, their energies radiating a kind of serene, stone-like judgment that is making Hux nervous. 

“Stand guard outside,” Ren says to them, ignoring Hux’s question, if it even was one. “I will be meditating throughout this experience. Hux will alert you to enter if necessary.” 

Something about Ren calling him Hux when speaking to the Knights feels like heat-giving praise, though Hux knows it makes no sense. What else would Ren call him? Hux might have expected an insult. _My companion_ was what he said in the dining room. To all those people. If he’d wanted to insult Hux in their presence, he would have said _lover_ or something worse. Companion has a dignity that Hux did not expect. 

When the Knights have left the room, Hux stands dumbly and watches Ren pacie the floor, his head angled downward and his hair hanging in his face. He’s breathing audibly again, in angry huffs, far from anything resembling meditation. 

“So you came here to let them get you high,” Hux says, speaking slowly as he tries to reason this out, “In order to try to conquer the experience. In case of future need of doing so.” Ren must have sensed Hux’s thoughts about potential opportunities for betrayal coming when Ren was impaired in this manner, more or less. This realization strikes Hux only dully, in his current state. It’s not as if he never entertained the idea that Ren knew all along.

“Don’t speak to me,” Ren says, holding up a finger in Hux’s direction. He’s still pacing, not looking at Hux. “I need to concentrate.” 

“On what? Are you all right?”

“Clearly not!” Ren roars, throwing his hair back. His eyes are wild, panicked. He was holding it together well enough in the presence of his Knights, but Hux can feel it now, through the bond, even past the murk of the spice: Ren is frightened. He hates this. “But I will be,” he says, nodding rapidly to himself. “I only need to-- Think. It won’t let me think, there’s-- An assault on the mind-- Not unlike, ah--” Ren winces and pulls at his hair with both hands, hard enough that Hux worries he’ll tug two chunks of it out. “Why would people do this by _choice_?”

“It’s not so bad if you lean into it rather than away from it,” Hux says. This is quality stuff they’ve ingested. He feels like himself, lucid, but floating, too. He approaches Ren with caution, reaching for him. “Come here,” he offers, voice gentle. “I’ll help you.” 

“Help me what?” Ren is snarling when he looks at Hux again. “Into a grave?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, your Knights would kill me with their minds from outside the room before I could lower the blade.” Hux smiles when Ren’s eyes widen with angry surprise, his pupils so blown. “You’re safe here, Ren,” Hux says, more seriously. Though he was serious about the other comment, too. “Just sit with me and see how you feel.” 

Guiding Ren toward the bed with the pace and attitude one might use with an agitated rancor, Hux banishes the temptation to think about what all this means: that Ren has sensed his wonderings about how to get rid of him, kept him alive and close regardless, and brought him here to demonstrate that such an attempt would fail. Or something like that. Hux will parse it all later. With his own mind reeling and loose, it won’t do to think of it now. He’ll concentrate instead on being Ren’s caregiver. Let the Knights standing outside sense his deep devotion to their master. 

As for Ren himself, Hux will make no prediction about what he’ll take away from this moment. He’s letting Hux draw him onto the bed, into his arms, both of them reclining against the mounds of pillows against the headboard. Ren breathes in powerful, shaky exhales through his nose, lips pressed together tightly. He’s watching Hux like he’s still waiting for that dagger to slide out of his sleeve. Hux shuffles out of his greatcoat and pushes it aside, then unclips his belt, where his blaster is holstered. Ren watches Hux set it atop his folded coat. 

“There, now,” Hux says. He takes off one glove, then the other, and strokes Ren’s cheek. “Have you really never done anything like this before?” he asks, keeping his voice soft if not free of judgment. “Even ritualistically?”

“What vile ritual would involve this filth.” 

“Plenty do, in many cultures. Not always spice in particular but similar substances.” 

Ren sniffs, derisive, but he also begins to relax, pushing his cheek into Hux’s touch. Perhaps he’s noticed that it feels especially good to engage in physical contact while high like this. Hux hasn’t had anything harder than brandy since his early twenties. He barely remembers his experiences on other drugs, even the ones that involved other people. He’d deemed it all too dangerous to his career early on, but the memories, hazy as they are, aren’t bad. 

“You know all about other cultures, huh?” Ren says, mumbling. His eyes flutter closed when Hux brushes his fingertips over the rim of his ear. “Everything the Empire told you.” 

“I’ve done independent research as well.” 

“There’s no such thing, in your culture.” Ren grunts with approval when Hux’s fingers wander down over the column of his neck, and again when they caress his exposed throat. 

“My culture,” Hux says, musing. He’s pleased with this arrangement, this setting, the way the tension is draining from Ren’s every muscle, the whole trembling mass of him growing heavier against Hux. “Is it not yours now, too? Or are you so above all you preside over that even you and I don’t share anything real?” 

Hux should shut up, certainly, should say nothing in this situation except sweet nonsense designed to talk Ren through it, but Ren looks up at him with such oddly innocent concern that Hux is almost glad he said something so inadvisable and unconsidered. 

“I’m talking about the past,” Ren says. “What’s done is done. You can’t change how you were raised, that view of the galaxy. Nor can I, but I can reject it. Ignore it. Except, you--” 

“Me?” Hux says. He’s stroking Ren’s hair, genuinely curious. 

Ren moans and pinches his eyes shut. He looks furious when he opens them again, like he lit some fire inside himself. His shoulders have gone tense. 

“You’re not like me,” Ren says. “You hang on to the past.” 

Hux considers whether this is true. He hopes so: those who can’t learn from the past are doomed, and forgiving is too much like forgetting. He looks over Ren’s head at the wide doors that have been left open to the room’s expansive balcony. Some assassin could sneak in through those, he thinks. But Sabin and Farnik would sense him coming and burst inside. It’s strange living like this, as if things are fated and unchangeable, because they can be sensed, predicted, everything always unhidden. 

Except that Ren is still so wrong about some things. This arrogant assumption that he will sense the truth before it can harm him has betrayed him before. Hux stood on a command bridge, ribs aching, and watched it happen. 

He flinches when he feels Ren’s hand sliding up onto his throat, his fingers spreading there.

“See,” Ren says, softly. 

“See what?”

Ren removes his hand. He looks sad suddenly, and Hux remembers a cadet at the Academy who would weep when he drank too much. Ren having an extended, particularly dramatic pout is the last thing Hux wants right now. 

“Nothing I do moves you,” Ren says. “You view me just as you always have.” 

“Ren.” Hux is too high to stop his eyes from rolling. “I’m holding you in my arms, I’m--” 

“It doesn’t matter. And I don’t blame you. I envy you. I wish I was capable of this kind of resignation. It serves you, I think.” 

Hux strokes Ren’s hair absently, enjoying the feeling of it running through his fingers. If Ren is trying to have some kind of serious conversation, Hux is disinterested. He’s never been a confessional person while high. Spice and drink alike ease him into accepting things as they are, which perhaps he’s already good at, as Ren says. It’s an ironic prerequisite for getting what one wants in the longer game, the more important sense. Grabbing for it too boldly is always doomed to fail. Ren knows that now, maybe. 

“Did I teach that to you?” Hux asks, amused with himself. This is _fantastic_ spice. The high is building at just the right pace, really sinking in now. He feels so untouchable, and also like he’s experiencing an epiphany that he was never truly in danger of not getting everything he wants. 

“You’ve taught me many hard lessons,” Ren says. 

“Such as?”

“People don’t change.” 

“What would you change about me?” Hux moves his fingers to Ren’s lips and presses at the bottom one, newly amazed by its perfect plumpness. He’s beginning to get hard. 

Ren doesn’t answer the question, just surges up to kiss Hux on the mouth. It feels like he’s saying: well, nothing. Obviously.

Hux has never kissed anyone while high. He’s been a bit tipsy kissing Ren before, but it had felt nothing like this. He can feel Ren noticing it, too, his breath coming faster against Hux’s lips as he presses Hux to the bed. There’s a tingling newness in it, as if they were only practicing at kissing all those other times, preparing for this kiss. 

“I wouldn’t care if they were watching us,” Ren says when he pulls back, eyes wild. “I don’t care that they know what I’m doing to you in here. Do you?”

“Are we talking about the Knights?” Hux is very hard now, heady, and doesn’t really care about much of anything except getting Ren inside him while he feels this way. “Or about, uh. The queen and the court, or just people generally?”

“Does it matter? You were proud, walking in there at my side.” 

Hux doesn’t want to admit this even while lying on his back with his legs open for Ren, his thighs squeezed around Ren’s sides. Ren’s chest is heaving. He closes his eyes when Hux touches his scar. 

“I can’t decide if you’d like it or not if I admitted that I think of you as one of my greatest achievements,” Hux says. 

“You didn’t do anything,” Ren says. 

“What do you mean, of course I did.” 

“No. You were just there. In existence. I did all the work. I do all the work, wanting you.” 

Hux expects Ren to dive down for another kiss to avoid confronting what he’s just said, but Ren is staring at Hux like he wants a response, like he’s just called Hux out rather than exposed something about himself. 

“I have thought about what it would all be like without you,” Hux says, not even sure what sort of confession this is.

“And.” 

Hux purses his lips and looks away. “Professional ecstasy,” he says. “Personal efficiency. Except that I had that before and don’t miss it.”

“What.”

“A solitary life. My own bed.”  

“I know,” Ren says, and something desperate in his voice draws Hux’s gaze. Hux regrets it when their eyes lock and Ren’s seem too open, too wide. Hux fights the urge to look away, which would be cowardly. “I know you love it,” Ren says. There’s an eye twitch, and whatever desperate thing was there in his expression is gone. “You love having me in your bed. I feel it. Even while you imagine how you might get rid of me.” 

“I don’t--” 

Ren shuts Hux up with a growling kiss that almost becomes a bite, his teeth snagging on Hux’s bottom lip. It feels instructional, like he’s telling Hux not to lie, not now. Hux pulls on Ren’s hair and moans, wondering about the room’s soundproofing or lack thereof. 

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Hux says when Ren starts to open his shirt. 

“What, fucking?”

“Any of it, but yes, that. Not here, while we’re compromised.” 

“My Knights will watch over us.” 

“Yes, but. Ren--”

Hux forgets what his argument for sanity was going to be when Ren crawls down to nuzzle and lick at his trapped dick, laving his tongue there until the crotch of Hux’s pants is damp.

“Did you forget how pants work?” Hux feels himself start to laugh and puts both hands over his face. What if this was their undoing, truly. _Two young leaders died while fucking today in the Almexa quadrant on Yrai’li, lured there by nothing more than a free meal and recreational drugs. Gullible, greedy, won’t be missed_. He only laughs harder, thinking of it that way.

“You smell good,” Ren says, mumbling this against Hux’s trapped dick. 

“I thought I only smelled good after you’d given me your load.” 

Ren looks up at Hux and grins. Hux is still laughing a little. He hasn’t shared a recurring joke with someone since he was a teenager. Of course it took him a full year to have one with Ren, and of course it’s to do with Ren coming in him. 

“Is there lubricant here?” Ren asks, burying his face against Hux’s crotch again. 

“What, in this bedchamber? I have no idea. You’re the expert on Yrai’li culture, you tell me.” 

“You must have known, too,” Ren says, lifting his face.

“Known what, that I’d end up on my back under you during this lunatic excuse for a summit?”

“About the drugs in the food. That they do that here. That it was a possibility.” 

Hux groans and lets his head fall back. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be different under the influence of something. You’re exactly the same.” 

“I’m exercising control.” 

“Right, that’s why you’re slobbering all over my dick before you’ve even taken it out. Control!”

Ren laughs, which surprises Hux. When he looks up, Ren seems surprised, too. 

“Anyway,” Ren says, unclasping his cape. “I’ve got my own.” 

“Your own?”

“Lube.”

“Oh, of course.”

Hux takes the cape from Ren and sits up to wrap it around his own shoulders. Ren pauses and stares as if he’s waiting for Hux to do some further trick, then resumes undressing. 

“Take everything else off,” Ren says, stepping out of the bed to get out of his boots, then his pants. 

“Everything but what,” Hux says, though he’s guessed. 

“My cape.” Ren tosses the heavy fastener onto the bed. 

Hux lets the cape fall away as he removes his clothes. His head is swimming, and he thinks he can feel their Force bond embracing the confusion of the drug’s introduction to their connection. Now he could swear he sees the strings between them, just faintly, glinting here and there when Ren moves through the light from the open balcony doors. 

“They think you’re madly obsessed with me,” Hux says, lying back when Ren crawls onto him. Ren is naked, and so is Hux, except for Ren’s cape, which he’s secured around his shoulders with the clasp holding it in place. All of this is so unwise, but it also seems like something ordained, like they can’t change course now. “You did that on purpose,” Hux says, which is just the start of a larger realization that can’t quite break through his current blissed-out state. Ren is mouthing at his neck, dragging his dick against Hux’s bared belly. “You wanted, ah. To make a display of me.” 

“Of us,” Ren says, his mouth muffled against Hux’s skin.

Hux doesn’t want to think about why. Not yet. He pushes Ren back by the shoulders and props him against the headboard before kneeling over his lap, the cape providing a kind of tent for both of them when Hux holds it around Ren’s shoulders, too. 

“My grandfather had a story like this,” Ren says, sounding terribly high again. It seems to come and go for him, mania pooling into his eyes before he reigns his reeling mind back in. 

“Don’t talk to me about your grandfather right now,” Hux says, because he’s squeezing lubricant from Ren’s portable tube of the stuff into his palm, preparing to finger himself open for Ren’s dick. 

“He had a great love,” Ren says, of course ignoring Hux’s request, “And when she betrayed him, he destroyed her.” 

“Are we fucking or are you threatening to kill me.” Hux isn’t especially interested in either option at present. He reaches down to smear the excess lube on Ren’s dick. 

“Do you think you’re my great love, Hux?” Ren asks. He’s trying to smirk, but his face is crumpling because Hux is stroking his cock, because he’s almost excruciatingly sensitive due to the spice. Hux can’t wait to hear him scream for the feeling of Hux sinking down around him, swallowing him up. 

“I think you wanted those people in that court to believe you consider me irreplaceable as such,” Hux says, careful to get the order of the words right. “I’ll worry about why later.” 

“Yes, later, ah. Hux.” 

“What.” 

“Keep, _unhh_ , like that, yes, keep going.” 

“No.” Hux switches from stroking Ren to feeling his way into himself. He doesn’t have the patience to do so carefully, is already afraid Ren will come before he seats himself. Ren whines and rubs his hands all over Hux’s chest, trying to hump Hux’s arse while he works himself open. 

“You made excuses for me at lunch,” Ren says. He’s staring at Hux’s throat. “Called yourself slight.” 

“I am slight compared to them. And you.” 

“Nhn. Hux.” 

“What. Stop saying my name.” 

Actually he loves it, is flushed with pleasure and trying to remember if Ren has ever said it this way before, during sex, in bed, with no hint of mockery. 

“Armitage,” Ren tries, now mocking. He grins at Hux’s snarl, then tries to kiss it off his face. Hux evades him, because he’s guiding Ren’s cock into his arse now, and he needs to keep watching Ren’s expression slacken with mindless pleasure, his grin dissolving away. 

“There now,” Hux says when Ren whimpers. Hux is barely containing similar noises himself. It’s exquisite, it always is, but now he feels all of it, an almost suffocating all-over awareness of how Ren lights up every particle of him when they’re connected like this: inside and out, real and imaginary. 

“Hux,” Ren says again, and it’s the way Hux has wanted to hear his name spoken since long before he wanted sex, because there’s more than that in it: lustful amazement, yes, but something tender, too. Ren’s hands shake on his sides.

“You’re trembling like a virgin,” Hux says, murmuring this against Ren’s mouth while he rides him: slow, so that this will last. 

“I was--”

“I know, oh.” Hux grabs Ren’s face with both hands and kisses him. It’s the first real mercy he’s wanted to give Ren, unless that day when Ren dropped to his knees and put his head in Hux’s lap counts. But really, Hux was counting coins in his head even while he stroked Ren’s hair. 

This is something else, his thumbs brushing over Ren’s cheeks with a different kind of urgency, head empty. But it’s the drugs, he remembers, even as he throws his head back and rides Ren with reckless abandon, too lost already to keep it slow. This lost-ness is a thing that will pass, like all of this, so he lets himself have it while he can. As ever.

Ren finishes with a mournful groan, burying his face against Hux’s chest. Hux yelps when Ren reaches between them and takes hold of his dick, somehow not having expected that. He braces himself on Ren’s shoulders and fucks Ren’s hand, still getting off on the drag of Ren’s dick against his rim as Ren begins to soften. 

“You came so hard,” Hux says, purring this out like praise when he feels Ren’s come leaking out of him already, the sound of Hux’s riding him truly obscene now. 

“It almost hurts,” Ren says, still breathless, his wet mouth open on Hux’s throat. “You’ll see.”

“I’ve, ah, _nhn_ \-- Done this before.” 

Ren grabs the back of Hux’s hair, still pumping his dick with his other hand. He pulls Hux’s head back, holding his gaze.

“No,” Ren says, fingers tightening in Hux’s hair and around his dick. “You haven’t.” 

Hux isn’t sure what about this sets him off, but he shouts when he comes, very literally having forgotten where they are. 

All he knows when he winds down from it, panting and wet-eyed, is that Ren was right: that was new. That was more than he’d ever had, almost too much. He throws his arms around Ren’s neck when he can move again and hides his damp lashes there, feels Ren’s pulse pounding like a beacon he can follow back to a place where things make sense, though of course they won’t. 

Post-fuck, Hux feels more high than before, the room tilting and his stomach beginning to lurch a bit when he holds his eyes open too long. He can see that Ren is worse for the wear, too, his gaze darting around fearfully when Hux tries to hold it. 

“It’s all right,” Hux says, petting Ren’s face. “Look at me.” 

“I look up from these things, sometimes,” Ren says, pinching his eyes shut instead. “And I forget why I thought, uh. It would work. Why I was so sure.” 

“We’re fine, Ren.” Hux looks over at the door to make sure this is true. He can’t push his senses past it, but he has no reason to think that Sabin and Farnik aren’t still out there, standing guard. 

“It feels like Snoke did,” Ren says when Hux pulls off his dick and gathers him close, trying to maintain a protective energy rather than succumbing to his own twirling exhaustion. “In my head. This confusion.” 

“What-- the drug?” 

“Yes. Not knowing what’s real. Not being alone in my own mind.” 

“You never talk about that,” Hux says, resting his forehead against Ren’s. 

“Snoke?”

“Well, anything, but yes, him.” 

Ren sniffs and opens his eyes. He searches Hux’s, shakes his head. “Would you tell me your secrets,” he asks. “If you were in my place?”

Hux would rather sleep than think about that question and how he might answer it. He closes his eyes and paws absently at Ren’s chest. 

“Stop trying to tell me you’re afraid of me,” Hux says, unable to help himself, the drugs or the drink pushing the words out while his eyes remain closed. “I don’t believe you.” 

“I’m not afraid of anyone,” Ren says. He sounds like he means it and also like he’s sad about it. 

They lie there and just breathe against each other’s faces, sweaty over the rumpled sheets, not really sleeping. The light matures outside and Hux starts to shiver when the sweat cools on his skin. 

“We should get up,” Hux mutters. His mouth feels dry. There’s still too much spice in his system for him to be distressed about their vulnerability, but something about this exercise seems designed to demonstrate that they can go anywhere, do anything, and still be untouched. This seems both valid and impossible. 

Ren sits up first, groaning and sweeping his hair off his face. Hux can feel through their bond that he’s in pain: hungover, and also aching in a less physical way. Ren regrets this experiment with the drugs, with Hux, with engaging the Yrai’li. Hux imagines he could search Ren’s entire mental history and not find anything but regret. 

Something perks to life within him: _you could be the one exception_. It tugs at him, eager, like a child wanting attention. 

It’s a strategy Hux had not considered and one he would never entertain if he wasn’t still high. He could aim to stay with Ren. That could be his endgame, helping Ren sincerely and with real care. Demonstrating loyalty. Proving Ren wrong in his assumption about Hux, and about everything being against him eventually. 

Allowing this thought process to surface and bloom is sobering enough to get Hux sitting up. He passes the cape back to Ren and reminds himself that such a strategy would be inadvisable because it would rely on Ren being worthy of his sincere assistance not just now but always. Hux will not be fooled by any enjoyable interlude into thinking that could happen. 

“I’m not walking over their bridge,” Ren mutters.

Hux looks up to see that the sun has begun to go down, low clouds catching the golden light that is growing darker beneath them, along the horizon. 

“I think that’s best,” Hux decides. “They had the privilege of entertaining us. That should be more than enough.” 

“They’ll sell the story about us to the independent press.”

“Perhaps,” Hux says, uncomfortably. It’s a certainty. 

Ren stands from the bed, his cape tossed over his arm. “We won’t deny it in our own press.” 

“Well-- No, I suppose not.” The cramping dread in Hux’s stomach is tightening, something within him bracing itself.

“And then it will be known that I am not alone in this endeavor.” 

Ren keeps his back to Hux while he dresses. Hux pulls his clothes into his lap but can’t seem to make himself put them on. His head feels too thick, or his bones too tight. The shivering that started when his sweat cooled persists. 

“Known by whom,” Hux asks when he’s figured it out. 

The Resistance, Ren doesn’t say. He looks at Hux only from the corner of his eye, fully dressed now. 

His mother, the girl, those ex-friends. Of course. Ren cares that they’ll hear he’s not just ruling over all he stole from Snoke. He’ll want them to think he’s found some kind of authentic happiness without them. 

“I see,” Hux says. He pulls on his shirt first, then his underwear. His legs are shaking, tired. “This is good. Very smart, yes. Put the idea out into the galaxy that I’m some kind of treasured companion to you. Invaluable. They believe you’re still-- Or, they want to. Your mother, that girl you manipulated. They’ll believe you could care about me this way, therefore. Then we stage some kind of opportunity for them to kidnap me. And the Force bond works like a beacon, assuming you don’t just ambush them as they approach me.” 

“It would be better if you were with them for a while,” Ren says, muttering. He’s pulling on his gloves. “That way I could spy on them using our Force bond. Make sure that we know where every contingent is before destroying them all.” 

“Right.” Hux doesn’t like the way his voice sounded just then, and he ducks Ren’s gaze when he turns. “Good.” 

“Obviously this is not an ideal plan, but if they continue to evade us--”

“No, yes. Absolutely.” 

Hux makes himself presentable, using a glass pane on one of the balcony doors to consult his reflection and straighten his hair. He wants to laugh at himself when he sees his hollow, drugged-out visage peering back at him. He’d felt like someone else, a moment ago. Some lovely object of adoration. Hilarious. The wonders of spice.

Out in the hallway, Sabin and Farnik stand dutifully on either side of the door. The same attendant who escorted them to the room rushes down the hall at the sight of their emergence and asks if they are ready to proceed toward the bridge ceremony.

“No,” Ren says, the flatness of his voice itself a threat. “We are departing now. Give this to Queen Huup.” He holds out the heavy clasp with the Order’s new insignia, his cape still only draped over his arm. The attendant takes it, visibly confused, mouth open. “Tell her she’s to wear it on her person whenever we return to Yrai’li and also in any public broadcasts in which she appears. It shall serve as a symbol of her loyalty to the Order. Convey these instructions precisely,” Ren says, holding his finger in the attendant’s face. “As there will of course be consequences for all of Yrai’li if my orders are not followed.” 

“A simple enough request, Supreme Leader,” the attendant manages to stammer out, bowing.

Hux’s stomach is roiling by the time they’re back in Ren’s shuttle, blasting off. Ren has deigned to allow his favorite pilot to fly in lieu of himself, and he approaches her as soon as they’ve left the planet’s surface.

“Take us to Duron,” he says. “We’ll make a brief stop there to oversee progress before returning to the _Finalizer_.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Hux can’t help but admire how well-crafted this seeming sloppiness actually was. Their come-stained bedsheets left behind as fodder for the gossip. Ren’s willingness to partake of the spice-laced meal will be seen as evidence of his clumsiness, his youth, but his ability to hold court while under the influence will be interpreted as admirable by Yrai’li culture, even as his refusal to join their ceremony stings. They will admire that, too. It really was too much to ask. 

“A successful trip,” Hux says when Ren finally looks at him, Duron visible through the front viewport. 

“Here,” Ren says. He holds out the thermos of water he’s been gulping from since they got on board. “I know you’re thirsty,” he says when Hux shakes his head. 

_I don’t want anything from you_ , Hux thinks, still high enough to hold Ren’s gaze and broadcast this through their connection. 

Ren has the gall to look confused. _You’re angry_. 

_No, I just don’t want your thermos, sir, kindly get it out of my face_.

Ren sniffs and turns away. He gulps down the last of the water while Hux watches. 

Hux can’t stop thinking about those sex-stained sheets, as if they’re the real symbol that Ren left behind. And of course they are. It’s childish and infuriatingly brilliant. 

It’s raining on what will become the capitol of Duron, yet unnamed. Hux is glad for the downpour, which instantly makes him feel more awake, less groggy and bitter, washing over him like the antidote to the foul indulgence of their visit to Yrai’li. 

Ren keeps close as they walk toward the construction site, and Hux remembers how he was carried over the pools on Ren’s back on his first trip here. He moves away when Ren’s shoulder bumps his, and again when Ren follows him, leaning into his trajectory. 

The construction site is unlike any Hux had seen before knowing this place. There’s a grace to it already, because of Hux’s design and because of the properties of this place itself. Rain does not slow the progress. The supervising officer on site chirpily jogs over to give Ren a briefing and is waved away. Ren just wants to stand on the hill with the best view of the site and stare for a while at what is being built for him. 

Hux stands beside him, tired. He licks rain from his lips. It’s safe to drink, they’ve tested it. They have a catchment system built already to provide water for the workers on the build site and the officers in their overseeing tower. 

The design of the fortress was inspired by two things: the observatory on Jakku which terrified Hux as a child, which Ren may or may not know about via Snoke, and the mask that Ren wore before Snoke inspired him to destroy it. Hux isn’t sure that Ren has recognized that second source of inspiration either; he didn’t want to confess to it out loud, but the way Ren smiled slowly when he first saw the design made Hux think he must have noticed it. At the time Hux had been glad, flushed with the pleasure of being seen. 

Ren takes Hux’s hand. The Knights and a gathering of officers are watching, so Hux doesn’t pull away. He twines his gloved fingers through Ren’s and lets Ren tug him just a bit closer. He can hear Ren breathing the way that he does when he’s beginning to get agitated, when he’s toiling silently over some unsaid thing. 

“It will be perfect,” Ren says. “Our fortress.” 

Hux keeps his eyes on the site, his fingers tightening around Ren’s. It’s invitation to live there with Ren, this referral to the fortress as something that belongs to both of them. Ren has been careful not to imply that before now. 

“We’ll make sure of that,” Hux says. “Sir.” 

There’s such a stringent, palpable objection from their already shuddering bond that for a moment Hux thinks an earthquake is starting. They’ve set off a few minor ones since the construction began, but this is just something that’s passing between him and Ren, a bone-deep reproach from the Force. 

“I need you,” Ren says, spitting this out like he wishes it were an insult. “Okay?” 

“Yes, you explained exactly how. As bait.” 

“You gave me the idea,” Ren says, his grip on Hux’s hand growing painful. “Traitor.” 

Hux turns to Ren with a kind of terrified elation at being given that much credit. It fades when he considers the deeper implications, but he’s sure that Ren saw that thrill in his eyes before the fear eclipsed it. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hux says. Ren’s mouth is close to his, like the threat of a kiss. Everyone present is staring at them, Ren’s intended display of their hand-holding partnership twisting into something else. 

“Don’t call me sir anymore,” Ren says, his gaze flicking down to Hux’s lips. 

“No? As you wish. What should I--”

“Act like you love me.” Ren’s eyes are blazing when they meet Hux’s again, his jaw tight. He didn’t even look this furious when he put Hux on his knees in Snoke’s burning throne room. “And like I--” 

Ren can’t make himself say the rest, but he keeps hold of Hux’s hand and exhales as he looks again at the construction site, trembling with some profound rage that Hux is glad to have brought on, despite everything. He can’t stop feeling thrilled when he inspires real emotion in Ren, and this hissing fury is the most authentic flavor of Ren available. 

Thus far, anyway.

Hux was worried when they left Yrai’li, asking himself if it’s even possible to be someone’s holo chess piece and still be playing the game. He has his answer now, and it’s a relief. He can be many things, in Ren’s view, all at once. 

 

**


	3. Chapter 3

Standing at the threshold of what is somehow now his living quarters, Hux tries to combat the unwelcome flush of pleasure across his cheeks by remembering times in the past when he’d been thrilled to relocate. The most significant was when he first had a private room as a lieutenant commander, windowless and closet-sized but all his own. With every subsequent promotion the space he claimed was a bit bigger, until he had four whole rooms to himself as General on the _Finalizer_ , a spacious fresher included. That had seemed miraculous once, a bounty that brought on this same jittery blush of pride.

This is similar, but also something else entirely. The sheer scale of the rooms is giving him some kind of paralyzing reverse claustrophobia, and he fears it’s too much, far too much. It’s especially humiliating because he designed it himself, though with Ren’s oversized parameters in mind. He’s locked in place by a sense of being shown something forbidden, dwarfed by the massive frame of the main entryway and unable to make himself step into the grand front room. 

The floors of the residence are tiled with polished Vilarian stone, which was very expensive, and the interior walls have been painted in a luminescent purple-gray that shimmers faintly against natural light from the one-way viewports that line the outer walls. Beyond that there’s the pervading smell of freshly constructed durasteel, a scent that Hux associates with hope and forthcoming victory, as he knew nothing but rusting Imperial hand-downs until he was an adult overseeing new construction for the Order. 

“Coming through,” Ren says, appearing behind him with an armload of disorganized belongings: clothes, mostly, and a few sparring weapons that Hux recognizes from training sessions with the Knights that he’s discreetly observed. “What are you doing?” Ren asks when Hux just stares at him, still stuck in place by his sense of maybe having overreached, maybe not belonging here. 

“Is this normal to you?” Hux asks, wanting to get annoyed at Ren rather than himself. “Is this where you always pictured yourself living? In a miniature palace within a palace?” 

“Dramatic,” Ren accuses, shouldering past. “And, yes. It is what I always pictured. Why should I have anything less.” 

Hux withholds a comment about this resembling Snoke’s philosophy a little too closely. “Are you just carrying all that from the shuttle?” he asks instead, again critical. He follows Ren into their new home warily, keeping in his wake, as if the floor might be unstable and it’s only safe to walk where Ren’s heavy gait has tested it. It’s ridiculous: Hux has walked these rooms many times before, inspecting every detail to ensure perfection. It’s just that they weren’t furnished then, and he wasn’t watching Ren throw his belongings onto their new bed, which is approximately twice the size of the old one. Hux’s face burns, just looking at it. 

“That’s the last of it,” Ren says, meaning his things. “I prefer to transport my own belongings.” 

“You don’t want anyone touching them, you mean. Not even a droid.” 

“Least of all a droid.” Ren walks to Hux and observes him with a closeness that makes Hux want to duck away, aware that his hot cheeks are being noted. “You haven’t lived on a planet in a long time,” Ren says. He touches Hux’s blazing cheek, gentle and coaxing, like Hux is a nervous animal. 

“It’s not that,” Hux says. He moves away, toward the windows. Ren wanted a balcony, but Hux forbade it for security reasons. “It’s just suddenly clear to me that this is too lavish in scale, the size alone. I don’t know what I was thinking, allowing this design. I would resent us, if I were one of our, ah. Subjects.” 

“Subjects,” Ren repeats, making fun of him. “Even I don’t call them that.” 

“You know what I mean.”

Ren walks up behind Hux and lifts him off his feet, ignoring his lukewarm protests. Ren is determined to be in a good mood about their long-delayed move-in to the fortress, in defiance of what he surely views as Hux’s pointless dithering. It’s not uncommon that Hux feeling particularly anxious or uncertain about something makes Ren all the more relaxed and jovial. He’s always in a celebratory mood when Hux least wants him to be, and never when Hux thinks it’s called for. 

“Here,” Ren says, swinging Hux around to deposit him onto the bed. “Make yourself at home.”

Hux does so by glowering up at Ren from the bed and adjusting his collar. Ren has stopped using the Force to move him about, but he’s still fond of picking Hux up and carrying him places when the mood strikes. He at least only does this when they’re alone. 

“This is your home now,” Ren says, with a combination of instruction and self-pity that never fails to enrage Hux. “Unless you changed your mind.” Ren sniffs, the hurt overwhelming his need to correct Hux, which is another thing Hux hates, because it makes him feel sorry for Ren when he doesn’t want to, and guilty for whatever completely justified thing he did to bring on this reaction. “You miss your ship already. It’s not even been an hour.” 

“It’s not that. I’m just not sure this suits me. I always thought I deserved such impressive surroundings. Now I feel like a pretender.” 

“You are good at pretending,” Ren says. “Are you not?” 

Hux looks away from him with regret. Now he’s spoiled Ren’s good mood and their whole overdue homecoming. He didn’t even intend to make things gloomy, whereas sometimes that is absolutely his aim, if Ren’s high spirits are irrational and annoying enough. Ren would hate it if he were always agreeable and full of cheer. He would know that was a lie. 

“It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Hux says when Ren stalks over to the wardrobe with the clothes he’d thrown onto the bed, apparently intent on hanging things himself. “Or do you even know that term?”

“I lived as a monk in my formative years,” Ren says, keeping his back to the bed. He’s putting things up clumsily, hangers clacking together. “Then Snoke kept me as a slave, more or less. I haven’t always been surrounded by nice things.” 

“Ren,” Hux says, softly enough that Ren turns from the wardrobe with a hopeful, searching expression that makes Hux want to rescind his sympathy. “I’m still trying to work out how to live like this.”

“Like what.” 

“In relative peace. At the top of a tower. Without constant struggle.” 

With you, he doesn’t add. He looks at Ren shyly, as if he had said it, because Ren will have heard it. 

“It’s natural for you to miss the ship,” Ren says. “You can go back, if you like.” 

“I know that,” Hux snaps, inclined to be offended by the suggestion that he’d need permission to do so before he realizes that was just an invitation to say that no, of course he doesn’t want to go back to the ship, because Ren is not there. “Did you really not sense my years of concern that you wouldn’t want me here with you?” 

Hux has gotten into a bad habit of responding to Ren’s little pouts this way: by saying exactly what Ren wants to hear, and meaning it. 

“You ask me not to intrude on your thoughts,” Ren says. He’s still fussing with his wardrobe. “And then you berate me for not reading them well enough.” 

“I’m hardly berating.” Hux picks up one of the decorative pillows that he’s embarrassed to recall he selected himself, after some amount of consideration. Ren has turned him into something ornamental. In retaliation, Hux lobs the pillow at Ren’s back. Ren senses it coming and turns to catch it in one hand, glowering. 

“Why are you throwing things at me?” 

“To stop you from whatever you’re doing. Hanging clothes like a service droid. I’ve never seen you hang up your clothes before.” 

“What would you like me to do, Hux.” 

“Shut the door to the main entryway. I think we left it open.” 

“We?” Ren walks to the bed, still holding the pillow Hux threw at him. Its fabric is a glossy dark gray, like most of their furnishings. Ren teased Hux for making their quarters on Duron look as much like the durasteel interiors of the _Finalizer_ as possible. “You’re the one who was in some kind of miserable trance,” Ren says. He lowers the pillow and taps one corner against Hux’s belly, then lower. 

“I’m not miserable,” Hux says. To his occasional annoyance, it’s true. “It’s just shocking to be walking into this thing I’ve designed at last, after all this time.” 

“Because you didn’t think you’d ever really make it here.”

“No.” Well, yes, but Ren knows that and Hux won’t allow himself to be taunted for it, when Ren gave him plenty of good reasons to think he would never get here. “You’d understand if you’d grown up the way I had.” 

“Will you never tire of telling me that.” 

“No, never.” 

Hux scoots forward and clamps his legs around Ren’s. The past few cycles have been a whirlwind of nonstop administrative work, every loose end involved in command’s relocation from the _Finalizer_ to the residence on Duron needing to be carefully tied up before Hux handed the ship over to General Pallamer. She’s become his proper protege since he accepted that he would eventually live here with Ren. He’s known her since she was a subadult who had to have her uniform taken in because she was too slight for any of the prefabricated sizes. Perhaps that was why he liked her, then. Now he trusts her completely, but the transition has still been draining. He’s felt pulled very thin, one foot still onboard the _Finalizer_ and the other here on Duron. He hasn’t even had energy for fucking, though he did let Ren rub him off in the shower on their last night aboard the ship, for old times’ sake. 

“I’ll use the Force to shut the door,” Ren says. “If you tell me why you want it shut.” 

“Because I don’t want to live every moment of my life under public scrutiny.” 

“Mhm. Be more specific.” 

Hux sits up and tugs Ren close by the hips, his thighs clamping around Ren’s legs. Ren is so wide at all points, and Hux is recently out of practice when it comes to spreading his legs: there’s an ache in his hip joints just for trying to contain Ren this way. He rests his chin on Ren’s stomach and peers up at him. 

“Supreme Leader,” he says, pronouncing it in one of the ways he knows Ren likes best: sarcastic, but also demurring. “Don’t you always know what I want?” 

“Only because you always want the same thing.” 

“Ha.” Hux rubs his face against Ren’s stomach and moans, hiding a yawn. Ren is getting hard for him. “Close that door,” Hux says again, his voice muffled against Ren’s tunic. 

“Say why you want me to.” 

“So I can have you.” Hux untucks Ren’s tunic and runs his fingertips over Ren’s skin, tilting his head back to give Ren a triumphant grin when his muscles twitch against the touch. Hux has felt it through their bond over the past few days: Ren’s growing impatience, that hot itch of need under his skin. 

Ren puts his hand on top of Hux’s head and scratches his fingertips against Hux’s scalp. Hux closes his eyes, approving. He can hear the heavy door out in the front room sliding along the floor as Ren uses the Force to tug it shut. He probably shouldn’t. He’s broken doors at home before, by using the Force to close them too hastily.

Home-- Only this is their home now. Ren will have to keep reminding him. It doesn’t feel real yet. In almost two years at Ren’s side, there’s much about Hux’s life that he can only make some parts of himself imperfectly accept as true.  

Just before the door can close completely, there are urgent footsteps out in the corridor. Hux groans under his breath, his chin still resting on Ren’s stomach. Only the Knights have been permitted up here so far. Ren has some vague plans to give them all assignments that would require finding new top-clearance guards for this wing of the fortress, but during the transition they trust no one else. 

“I’ll handle it,” Ren says, as if Hux has leapt up to try and do so himself. 

“Good,” Hux says. He gives Ren a little shove. “I’m tired, frankly.” 

“I know.” Ren touches Hux’s head again before walking out to meet his Knights. Hux is left with a kind of buzzing feeling of being looked forward to. It’s his favorite Ren-inspired sensation, other than deep satiation. 

Ren can just as easily be the cause of all of Hux’s least favorite sensations. Crawling paranoia and dread of the unknown, now most frequently brought on by attempts to imagine what his life would be like without Ren. He’s let himself become too closely wound into the situation with Ren, both privately and publicly. Perhaps Ren has done this intentionally, to entrap him. Hux’s other least favorite Ren-related feeling is the enduring suspicion that Ren is playing this game better than he is. Ren has never been patient, but it could all always be part of some larger destiny that he has in mind solely for himself. To imagine otherwise still feels more foolish than the alternative. 

But at the end of most days Hux is too exhausted by more immediate concerns to obsess over the potentialities of the future the way he once did. There is urgent work to do now, and it’s far more rewarding than designing the fortress was, though taxing in a different way that drains him more fully. There is a part of him that remains on edge for every day that passes without any sign of the Resistance’s continued existence out there in some dank cave far from the Order’s ascendancy. It’s not even that he fears their inevitable attempt to strike again: if they had been able to amass any amount of significant support, Hux’s intelligence agents would have picked up on something by now. He’s more concerned on a personal level, because of Ren’s interest in them, and the dangling threat of Ren demanding that he act as bait for capture by the Resistance in lieu of any other opportunities to locate them.

It’s obvious that Ren and his Knights are an impasse in terms of using meditation to bring this renewed slow-motion chase to an end. From what Hux has been able to discern through muttered bits of confession from Ren, the girl was able to trick him not just into going after the _Falcon_ only to find it empty but also to sacrificing some kind of Force-borne access to her at the same time. There’s a block to Ren’s power specifically when it comes to her, and to his Knights by association. 

At least, this is what Ren claims. Hux is always waiting for Ren to volunteer him for the abduction ruse they spoke about on Yrai’li, after Ren made their relationship public. Hux only brings it up when he’s angry and particularly looking to wound, because he’s discerned by now that Ren feels guilty about suggesting it. This realization doesn’t preclude Hux’s imagining that it will go still forward, eventually, when Ren is desperate enough for the sight of his long-lost enemies, his truest devotion. 

The flurry of activity surrounding the move to Duron has proved a useful distraction. Ren speaks to Hux of the Resistance only if he thinks minor incidents here and there could be related to their efforts. None have proved to be thus far. Both Hux and Ren feel uneasy with the complete silence from the surviving rebels, as though its duration indicates a particularly dire storm of activity to come. Hux has been proactive with the scattered powers that could present potential allyship to the Resistance, both in military strikes when they are found to have most probably tried to do so and in appeasing the more pragmatic factions who can see that the Order has more to offer them. The Resistance remains a ghost that haunts he and Ren especially, but it’s a watery spectre, more emotionally taxing than truly threatening.

Hux groans and peels himself off the bed at the thought of something being _emotionally taxing_. This is the vocabulary life with Ren has taught him, though it’s not a phrase Ren would use in conversation. It’s just an ongoing theme. 

He goes to the windows, arms hugged over his chest because the climate system is still in need of adjustment, the room too cold. Outside the weather is as usual: overcast in a glittering way, mist billowed in clouds over the distant mountains. They have built five major structures already, this fortress over the kyber caves being the final project to complete. There was delicacy in the design itself and in the implementing of it, and then a number of off-planet complications that he and Ren had to tend to before they could consider setting up house in the fortress a priority, including a ‘Post-Imperial’ summit with three thus-far independant regimes. They are far flung and unimpressive to Hux, really just gangs who would be more trouble than they’re worth to control, but Ren brought Hux around on the appearance of cooperation if not the actual practice of being cooperative. Ren has as little interest as Hux when it comes to appeasement. They learned plenty just from appearing at the summit, Hux must admit.

He frowns at his reflection in transparisteel when he thinks of all the things he must admit, like what he said to Ren before being true, that he did worry he wouldn’t end up here, still at the Supreme Leader’s side and expected nightly in his upgraded bed. It’s uncomfortable _because_ it’s comfortable, suspiciously so, and all the more for the time that’s gone by and continues to pass without any conclusion in sight. Hux is regularly alarmed by his insuppressible hope that things are just going to go on like this as if by magic, as if this whole thing will somehow impossibly _continue_. But he also doesn’t want to be elsewhere. 

As ever.

It’s also true that he’s tired. He watches himself yawn again and reaches down to unfasten his belt. Ren is talking with the Knights out in the corridor that only they are permitted to enter. Part of Hux’s anxiety about being here at last is the necessary isolation. He once feared Ren would put him in his grave, and he knows he still should, but it’s hard to do when he also feels that he’s locking himself up in a sleek, elevated tomb along with Ren. It seems now that if they die of this they’ll do so together, but that can’t be right. 

“The navigators are refusing to leave the ship,” Ren says, appearing in the doorway while Hux continues to undress. 

“Why don’t you just kill them,” Hux says, irritable. He’s beyond sick of hearing about them, and well past thinking they’re good for anything but another pain his arse. The Force bond he has with Ren, unwelcome and familiar friend, chills him like a reprimand, or maybe that’s Ren himself. 

“Funny,” Ren says, as if that was a joke. “Wyn and I are going back up to deal with them.” 

“Ren.” Hux winces. He tries to make his face hard before he turns to Ren. “Be careful.” 

“They present no danger to us.”

You don’t know that, Hux thinks, and Ren’s mouth quirks. He turns to leave without saying anything more or using the bond to tell Hux that of course he’ll be careful, of course he knows what he’s doing. Perhaps Hux should take the lack of reassurance as a compliment, a sign that Ren knows Hux is too smart to believe that, where the navigators are concerned. 

Hux had been planning to sleep, preferably after being fucked by Ren at long last, but when Ren is gone he feels too reckless to allow the day to draw to a close. He’s been invited to a welcome dinner that’s being held for the stable of young officers who have moved to their own planetside quarters within the fortress in recent days. He had planned vaguely to put in an appearance but upon arrival ends up ushered into accepting a plate and taking a seat. It’s the younger officers who have this ability to draw him with the warmth of their optimism about this stage of the Order’s history, and he ends up enjoying himself, glad for the distraction. Sabin remains against the wall not far from his table, watchful behind her mask. She’s become his personal bodyguard when Ren is not available or willing to join him. 

“Have you had anything from Ren?” Hux asks her on the way back to the residence. He’s not looking forward to being there in there alone. 

“Had anything, sir?” 

She knows precisely what he means, Hux is sure, but she’s taken up the habit of being as sharp with him as she is with Ren when he’s said something she finds fault with. It’s never direct, always dressed up in deference, but Hux can hear it in her tone, vocoder or not. 

“About the status of his talks with the navigators. Or whatever you’d call it. Not talks, I suppose.” 

“I’ve had no sense of his progress. Are you concerned?”

There’s criticism in this question, too, because she and Hux both would have felt it already if anything had gone wrong. 

“Just curious,” Hux says. “I don’t understand the reverence Ren shows them, in his position. They seem fairly useless.” 

He means chiefly in their inability to locate Ren’s enemies, but he can’t really see any use for them beyond that either. Sabin slows her steps and gives Hux a sideways glance. He knew the comment would offend her and doesn’t care. 

“Master Kylo has had visions of their importance,” Sabin says. 

Something about the statement gives Hux a prick of alarm, not because there’s anything surprising about it but because it feels as if she’s confiding in Hux in a way that Ren would perhaps not approve of. 

“I’ll speak to him about it,” Hux says. He doesn’t like this feeling of being pulled into a confidence by one of the Knights, if that’s even what just happened. He once would have leapt at the opportunity to form a side alliance against Ren, and it’s still a probably advisable strategy, but the idea has become distasteful, even only for the purpose of gossiping about Ren’s view of the navigators. 

Hux leaves Sabin stationed in the corridor and enters the residence alone, peering distrustfully around at the dark corners. He didn’t imagine his first night here might be spent without Ren. It shouldn’t matter, but he feels both insulted by Ren’s absence and jealous of his getting to be back on the ship, which still feels like their true home. 

There’s a bar built into the wall in the sprawling entertaining room, in which Hux never expects to receive any actual company. He helps himself to a small pour of brandy, realizing as he drinks it that he’s near to asleep on his feet. 

Good, he thinks, tugging articles of clothing off on the way toward the preposterous bed. He didn’t want to be awake when Ren returned anyway. It’s not true that he can’t sleep when Ren isn’t beside him. Ren has made that claim, but it’s entirely inaccurate. 

He leaves his clothes in a pile at the foot of the bed. It feels as right as anything else about this situation. In the bed he crawls toward what’s normally Ren’s side, or was in their old bed, anyway. His protege has been given their old quarters. He hates to think of her there, as if she’ll be haunted by the ghosts of what went on in those rooms, or will be spying on their past just by living in the space where so much of it took place. It felt wrong to leave the bed for her, though it’s perfectly sanitary. He had the mattress changed, and of course she has new sheets. Lying in this new bed with his cheek pressed to finer blanketings, he cringes at the memory of being asked by a droid what to do with the old mattress and bedsheets. 

“What makes you think I care what happens to them?”

Hux actually barked that at the droid before turning to go, red-faced and embarrassed by his distress at the idea of their old bedclothes being destroyed. It made no sense. He was moving on with Ren, to bigger and better things, and he’s never been sentimental about possessions. Nor has he ever been sentimental about things he shared with another person, least of all Ren. 

He closes his eyes and flexes against the bed, trying to feel Ren through the bond. It’s no use, at this distance. He makes himself pretend that this is his fortress alone. That Ren has been disposed of and the remnants of the Resistance along with him. The Knights, too, while he’s at it, and certainly the navigators. All of Ren’s history, familial and otherwise, the disorienting moods, the doubt about what’s real and isn’t, the rare night when Hux wakes to find Ren clutching at him in some kind of post-nightmare desperation: gone, everything. 

One such incident of nighttime clinging happened not long ago, when they were just back from that summit. Hux had been sleeping deeply, and he was tugged out of it by Ren’s terror, which had seeped into their bond despite Ren’s attempts to keep it contained within himself. Ren was stroking Hux’s hair with his thumb, his other fingers clutched around the back of Hux’s head. The stroking but light but frantic, as if it were some ritual keeping danger at bay. Ren’s lips were on Hux’s forehead, trembling. 

He loves me, Hux had thought, and he’d even smiled triumphantly to himself, eyes still closed. Wickedly, victorious, he’d thought: at last, proof. 

In the morning that conclusion seemed like nonsense. Why should that have been different from any other gesture Ren has made when seeking reassurance? Out of bed, Ren was just as he’d always been under the lights of their shared quarters: dressing in silence, issuing orders, avoiding Hux’s eyes. 

Hux begins to nod off, having rolled himself clumsily into the blankets. He’s fighting against real sleep, not to keep awake for Ren but because he’s known for some time now that his dreams in this place will be strange and upsetting. He doesn’t dislike Duron, he’s drawn to it and feels especially alive here, but he doesn’t trust it. 

The first night’s dreams are muddled and unmemorable until they become preoccupied with sex, his body awakening while the rest of him goes on sleeping. In these dreams Ren is on top of him, grunting and thrusting with the graceless enthusiasm Hux needs from him. Hux realizes at one point that they have an audience: the Knights are standing around them in a circle, on guard, either watching or not from behind their masks. Then more people come into focus, circled around the Knights and craning their necks to get a better view of Ren fucking Hux atop a kind of ceremonial dais. 

It’s too much: there are too many of them, it’s their entire standing army and all the people on every planet they control, stretching to the horizon in every direction. It’s the entire galaxy looking on while Ren snaps his hips and closes his teeth around Hux’s earlobe, fucking him hard.

“Ren,” Hux says, grabbing a handful of his hair. “Wait.”

Asking for this causes Ren to disappear completely, and when Hux sits up he’s naked and alone on the dais. The Knights are gone, too, and his officers. He can’t see any stormtroopers, just regular people with dark interest in their eyes, gathering closer. 

“Ren!” Hux shouts, drawing his legs against his chest. He didn’t mean for Ren to go away entirely when he asked him to wait. He only wanted to leave this place and go somewhere private, to have Ren all to himself at last. But of course he’s scared Ren away in asking for it. 

He calls out again as the crowd shuffles closer. Hux feels curiously unthreatened by them, aside from the displeasure of being seen like this, with his cock hard and his arse red and open from Ren pounding into it. His less salacious nakedness is alarming, too. Everyone in this massive crowd can see his narrow shoulders, his skinny legs and unimpressive chest. The worst part is that no one is saying anything. No jeers or entreaties come from the crowd. They just go on staring, unblinking, devouring some part of him with their eyes. 

Hux wakes in a struggle with the blankets. He’s twisted them up in a labyrinthine way in his sleep, and he’s kicking, pushing, needing them off of him.  

“Here,” Ren says, gentle and heavy at Hux’s side. He draws the blankets away from Hux’s shoulders, unwinds them from his legs. 

Hux is dazed and blinking, for a moment not recognizing their surroundings. He grabs for Ren and buries his nose against the side of Ren’s neck, where the familiar smell of him is strongest. It’s a comfort, in this place that otherwise doesn’t feel like home. 

“How long have you been back?” Hux asks.

“I came in just now. You were twitching and moaning. Thought you might be dreaming about me.” 

“I was.” Hux is too delirious to think before speaking. “I dreamed you abandoned me.” 

“Oh no.” 

“What happened with the navigators?”

“Nothing. We can talk about it later.” 

“Ren--”

“You’re all dozy and warm.” Ren pushes his hand down over Hux’s chest, thumbs at his belly. “I like you like this.”

“Vulnerable and lying on my back? Yes, I know.” 

“Shut up,” Ren says, soft against Hux’s parted lips. 

Hux is usually not inclined to obey this particular command, but he would rather kiss Ren than attempt any further cutting remarks. It is often best like this, when he’s almost dozing under the heat of Ren’s mouth, too content to bother holding in his sighs and moans or even the occasional tired squeak of interest. Ren’s hands are cool on his bare skin. His hair smells like the rain. 

Ren pulls his shirt off and pauses, on his knees. He’s still fond of posing. Hux turns toward the windows that line the wall not far from their bed. The transparisteel is a one-way view out, with no visibility from the outside. It’s still something of a thrill, the thought of Ren fucking him inside a window-lined room. Only a thin coating of shadowscreen keeps them from being in full view of the galaxy.

“Oh, look,” Hux says when Ren is sucking a bruise into the side of his neck, possessive but slow, taking his time with it. Ren lifts his head and scans the window when Hux points. There’s a rare break in the clouds, a glimpse of the stars. 

“I punched that hole in the sky for you,” Ren says. “When our shuttle came down.”

“You did not.” 

The clouds quickly gather together again. Hux turns from the window with a sigh, hard and wanting but also contented. Pre-contented, which is lazy and troubling. Ren is smiling, mostly in his eyes. Hux thinks of that dream where they fucked on the dais. Ren wasn’t looking at him then, wasn’t really looking at anything. 

“I should have gone with you,” Hux says. 

“To the ship? Why?”

Hux kisses Ren so he won’t have to answer. Maybe Ren will taste the truth: that Hux doesn’t want to be alone here, not because he’s desperate to be with Ren every moment but because it seems unwise, even dangerous. It’s absurd, because the Knights are here. He thinks of the comment Sabin made about Ren’s feelings on the navigators and their importance, then gasps into Ren’s mouth and instructs himself to stop thinking entirely.

It’s not difficult, once Ren’s hands are between his thighs, greedily coaxing him open. Hux feels like they haven’t fucked in weeks, though it hasn’t actually been that long. He arches in Ren’s grip, grinds down against his mouth, hears himself getting loud and decides he doesn’t care. Only the Knights might hear, through the Force rather than the soundproofed walls, and they already know what Hux and Ren get up to in here. Everyone does. The whole galaxy. It’s not just a dream or a dark fantasy. The only person Hux risks revealing himself to by being loud in here is Ren, who knows exactly how good he’s making Hux feel.

They don’t talk much during sex anymore, aside from saying each other’s names. Hux tends to purr Ren’s out when Ren is deep inside him, and Ren usually holds back until Hux comes, when he’ll pronounce Hux’s name with astonished reverence, like Hux invented falling apart on a cock. Hux supposes he did, in the case of Ren’s specifically, and the thought makes him laugh against Ren’s mouth as he rolls his hips, held in Ren’s lap and feeling completely boneless while also in motion. 

“What’s funny,” Ren asks. 

“You were a virgin,” Hux says, rubbing his face against Ren’s. “Poor untouched monk boy. And I corrupted you.” 

“I was hardly a boy.”

“You were, though! _Ahh_ , yes, just-- Just in spirit.”

Ren eases Hux off his dick and turns him onto all fours. He reenters roughly, as if to demonstrate he’s never been anything but confident when it comes to mounting Hux’s arse. Hux moans in appreciation, clenching around Ren as he sinks to a full seat again. He stretches his arms out in front of him and grasps the blankets, turns his face toward the windows. It’s luxurious, this feeling of having been the only person who’s ever held Ren so deep inside him, just here, just there-- Hux grabs his cock and jerks himself until he’s coming all over the blankets. He’s wild with indulgence even after he’s empty, his still-spasming ass pressing back as his knees slide open wider. He wants more, more, everything, all of Ren. It’s never enough. 

Ren’s balls are audibly slapping against Hux’s arse in this kingly room, upon this obnoxiously large bed, and in the moment it feels perfect, like something ordained, or like a ritual they had to perform now that they’ve finally arrived here. Hux laughs against his palm and then bites it. Ren grabs his hips hard enough to hurt when he spills. He’s holding onto Hux like he’s afraid he’ll be carried away by his orgasm if he lets go. 

“I thought you wanted drowsy, quiet sex,” Hux says when Ren has pulled out and flopped down beside him, chest heaving. 

“Changed my mind.”

“Mhmm.” 

Hux rolls away from Ren. He wonders if Ren can feel the thrill of pleasure that moves through him when Ren follows, pressing himself against Hux’s back as if they’re connected by strings. Would Ren do this, or anything, if he knew how much pleasure Hux took from it? There are times when making Hux feel good is clearly Ren’s goal, and others when he’d withhold it despite his own suffering, just to make Hux squirm and fume and want him. 

“Will you really tell me about the navigators in the morning?” Hux asks, already nearing sleep again. His arse aches, wet and raw. It’s nice, like a sleep tonic, this sensation of being all used up. 

“Of course I’ll tell you,” Ren says. 

“Are they here? Have they left the ship?”

Ren’s silence speaks volumes. Hux sighs. So Ren wasn’t able to convince them. 

“Their equipment is delicate.” Ren’s tone has sharpened, because Hux dared to sigh. “The kyber here would interfere with it.”

“Fine. Maybe you could tell me what they’re using the equipment for, precisely? Or have they not told you?”

“It’s not morning. We can talk later. Sleep.” 

Hux would protest if he wasn’t exhausted. He bumps his arse back against Ren in a kind of admonishment. Ren squeezes Hux’s hip where it’s still tender from how hard Ren held onto him during sex. The blankets arrive via the Force, settling over them like a caress. 

“Did things seem alright up there?” Hux asks. He’s mumbling, eyes closed. “Anything to report?” 

“Everything’s fine.” 

“Why does that always sound like a lie, when you say it.” 

Ren doesn’t respond. Hux falls asleep, too comfortably drained to worry about Ren’s hurt feelings now.

In the morning, Hux wakes first. There are fifteen summons on his comm from various departments. Nominally he commands all of these people who are asking things of him, but Ren is the one who gets to do that from afar. Hux is still personally involved with most important projects. Ren insists this is by Hux’s own design, a product of some inability to let go. Hux scoffs at that accusation, but it’s not inaccurate to suggest he would rather oversee things personally than divide these duties between himself and Ren, who has his own troubles. 

“The navigators,” Hux says when he returns to the room after showering. Ren rolls over in bed, his face still buried in his pillow. “What happened?”

“They’re looking for the Resistance,” Ren says, mumbling this without lifting his face. “On my orders.”

“Hmm.” 

That seems too obvious, like a concealment of some grander scheme Hux will never be privy to. Ren might sense Hux thinking so, because he’s glowering when he pushes his hair off his face and blinks his eyes open. 

“The kyber on Duron would interfere with their equipment,” Ren says. “I told you all this last night.”

“You also said you would explain further in the morning.” 

“I can’t explain things you don’t understand.” 

“Oh, about the Force.” Hux feels himself sneering. He turns away. There is still so much they skirt around, as if they are always walking across that field with the narrow passages between poisoned pools that would change everything if one of them were to fall in, always teetering close to the edges. 

“You have more important things to do,” Ren says when Hux’s comm pings again. 

“Is it going to be an issue or not?” Hux asks, his tone sharpened by defeat. He never gets anywhere with Ren, not really, not even now that he’s gotten here, into this window-lined room that’s so big it feels like a stage. “Leaving the navigators up there,” Hux says when Ren lifts his face again, still frowning. “Is it going to cause problems?”

“No,” Ren says.

Then why did you and Wyn try to talk them down, Hux doesn’t say. He shakes his head and finishes buttoning up his tunic. It’s not technically a uniform, not anymore. He’s above that. But it’s uniform-like, just as these rooms resemble the interiors of the _Finalizer_. 

He’s no good at learning new tricks, turns out.

**

The first few days on Duron are hectic and demanding, as Hux expected. Also as he expected, Ren mostly keeps to the company of his Knights, performing unseen rituals that represent their commitment to residing here. Ren doesn’t speak again of his vague plans to send the Knights away on investigative missions. Before the move he expressed to Hux his concerns that the Knights aren’t challenged enough by their current assignment, which is essentially that of the mindless bodyguards in red that Snoke employed. Hux brings this up once at their dinner table on Duron, where they meet nightly to consult before fucking and sleeping. He resolves not to do so again when Ren shrugs one shoulder and shovels food into his mouth to avoid discussing it. 

“I’m too tired for anything,” Hux says later that night, when Ren crowds up behind him while he’s cleaning his teeth at the polished stone sink in their massive fresher. Hux meets Ren’s eyes in the mirror that covers the entire wall behind the sinks: there are two basins here, one for each of them. 

“Fine,” Ren says, still hovering. 

“You could blow me,” Hux says after he’s spat out his mouth rinse. 

“Okay,” Ren says, holding his gaze, unblinking. 

It’s like a competition: who will object first? How much more could Hux demand before Ren refused? Hux is getting hard for this, whatever it is, and his heart beat goes from quickened to slamming when Ren turns him around roughly by the shoulders and sinks to his knees, holding Hux’s gaze all the way down. 

Hux runs his fingers through Ren’s hair while he slides down Hux’s little silk shorts. Ren got them from some lewd spacestation vendor and gave them to Hux as a joke, possibly an insult. Hux wears them almost nightly in defiance of that attempt to make fun of him. They’re comfortable, and near enough to normal underthings. 

“I wonder what you’d look like with short hair,” Hux says when Ren is breathing onto his cockhead, delaying. 

“Not good,” Ren says. 

“I assumed as much. I know you like looking good, and you never change it.” 

“Maybe I’ll order you to grow yours out.” 

Ren swipes the tip of his tongue over Hux’s leaking slit after saying so. When he pulls back precome threads from Hux’s dick to Ren’s lower lip for just a moment. 

“Never,” Hux says, breathing harder. His stance widens slightly. 

“I could,” Ren says, and he licks Hux again. “I could ask that of you.” 

“I’d look like a fool.” 

“Maybe.” 

Ren swallows Hux down after saying so, deep throating him in one smooth glide. It’s not hard for Ren: he’s got a big mouth, and Hux’s cock is neither wide nor long. Still, there’s something impressive about Ren’s ability to do this so gracefully. Hux’s thighs shake when Ren bobs his head. They both moan, Ren’s mouth vibrating around Hux’s dick when he does. Hux has long theorized that Ren can feel his pleasure through the bond just as strongly as he experiences his own, that he drinks it up like yet another offering from his Grand Marshal. 

“Let me come on your face,” Hux says, just to see how Ren will respond. 

Ren snorts, Hux’s cock still in his mouth. He reaches up between Hux’s arse cheeks and rubs the pad of his thumb against the rim of Hux’s arsehole. Hux’s breath stutters when Ren pushes just the tip of his thumb inside him, dry and swift. Ren’s throat works around his cockhead, his other hand squeezing into the soft flesh of Hux’s inner thigh, thumb pressing over the pulse point there. Hux shouts and comes, swiftly enough to already be a little embarrassed, even as his cock is still emptying directly down Ren’s throat. 

He’s got both hands on top of Ren’s head when he returns to himself, and he’s whining, trying to push Ren off. Ren is a fan of over-stimulating him in all ways. He relents easily enough, and gives Hux a lazy smile, licks his lips. 

“You first,” Ren says.

Hux is still shaky, blinking. “What?”

“You can come on my face, sure. If I get to do it first, on yours.” 

Hux rolls his eyes and turns to the sink. He puts the water on, cold, and splashes some onto his face. Ren rises slowly behind him, with the energy of an enemy who was only pretending to be down for the count, now standing for another round. 

“Never mind,” Hux says. He widens his stance and presses his arse back, hands spread open on the countertop. “You can put it there,” he says, wiggling his hips. “If you like.” 

“Put what where.” 

“Your load. On my back, or my arse cheeks, but not inside.” 

Ren starts jerking himself somewhat furiously, probably already close. He adores sucking cock. Hux’s heart does a lift-like thing when he thinks about the fact that only he gets to know this, have this, and that only he ever has. That only he ever will is debatable, that same lifted thing sinking back down again when he thinks about Ren’s future and wonders if he can hold this particular record for very long. 

“Have you thought about it?” Hux asks, holding Ren’s gaze in the mirror while his face reddens, his fist and sloppy wet cockhead bumping against Hux’s arse cheeks at moments.

“Thought about, _ah_. What?”

“My face, what I’d look like coated in your come. How I’d have to wipe it off my eyelashes and out of my fringe.”

Ren has a fetish for both things, covered in come or not. Hux grins when Ren finishes with an imperfectly suppressed groan, his head tipping back while he shoots on Hux’s back, arse, thighs. 

Hux keeps his position and allows Ren to clean him with a dampened cloth. At some point this ritual reversed, and Hux finds it funny to think that Ren might have once envied him for being the one who took care to clean the other in the aftermath. Ren seems to get off on it as Hux once did, as if Hux is helpless to do this himself. 

In bed afterward it feels as if some stale tension has lifted at last. Hux does his evening rounds via comm, checking on things here and there. Ren rests his head on Hux’s thigh and lets Hux stroke his cheek, his hair. It has a calming effect on Hux, while he’s otherwise focused on work. 

“The truth is I don’t know,” Ren says, picking up some conversation they were having hours ago.

“Don’t know what,” Hux asks, still stroking his hair. He’s accustomed to all Ren’s habits by now, including this tendency to travel back in time to some discussion Hux had given up on. 

“What orders to give the Knights.” Ren swallows; Hux can feel it against his thigh, that heavy bob of his throat. “I don’t want to be like the ones who tried to lead me. I’ve never seen someone lead well.” 

Hux thinks of Ren’s mother. She hasn’t lead her faction well, but it can’t be denied that they’re still out there, against all odds. Hux might also take Ren’s statement as a personal insult, if he’d ever believed Ren had considered him to be leading anything. 

“I think it’s wise to keep them here for now,” Hux says. “Where would you send them, anyway, if you were to give them missions elsewhere?” 

It feels so good, already, to be having an open chat about anything, particularly with Ren in this surrendered position, slumped in Hux’s lap. Hux won’t hold his breath hoping for it to continue, however. He quirks his lips and returns his attention to the comm screen when Ren remains silent. 

“I feel that if I sent them out to find the Resistance, they could,” Ren says. “With the navigators to point them in the right direction.” 

“So why not send a few of them at a time,” Hux asks. His fingers have gone still in Ren’s hair. If the Resistance is found, Hux may be called upon to act as bait. It’s not that he doesn’t want to find them or isn’t willing to sacrifice for the cause. He’s only out of practice with the brand of misery they would put him through while Ren listened in through the bond, gathering information. 

“I don’t like the thought of breaking apart,” Ren says. He swallows again. “Not yet.” 

“Well. As I said, keeping them all here for now, during the transition, makes sense. Are you worried that they’re growing restless? Critical of your command?”

“No. But I am.”

“You’re-- What?”

Ren shakes his head. When his eyes close, Hux can feel his lashes brush against his thigh. He shivers and looks to the windows. Everything outside is as usual: mist condescending into droplets that slide down the transparisteel, clouds blowing by overhead. 

They’re both asleep soon afterward, Ren curled onto his side and Hux pressed up behind him, pulled tight against the warmth of him. The temperature control in their rooms is now comfortably efficient, but nothing heats him as thoroughly as Ren’s back, or his chest, also his mouth. 

Hux dreams that they wake in the morning and begin going about their day. It feels real, like a glimpse of what’s actually to come, except that there’s a red light in the distance and he knows something in that direction is coming for them. 

“I would tell you everything if I didn’t think you’d use it against me,” Ren says when he’s dressing in the dream, his back turned on Hux. He’s got black scar-strip bandages pressed over all his old scars, as if they’ve reopened during the night. 

Hux tries to say that he won’t use anything against Ren, not now, but he can’t pry his lips apart or make any sound. He gives up after a few attempts, sure that Ren wouldn’t believe him, anyway. 

“I want to,” Ren says, more softly, half looking back over his shoulder. 

Hux wakes up with a jerk, having tried in the dream to fling himself at Ren, needing to make him understand something. When he wakes he’s not sure what it was. The real Ren rolls over and makes an annoyed noise under his breath as he gathers Hux into his arms. 

“This place gives me unsettling dreams,” Hux says. His eyes are wide open and darting. All he can really see is Ren’s shoulder and the shadows on the ceiling. 

“You had them on the ship, too,” Ren says, apparently awake. 

“Not like this.” 

“Like what?”

“Never mind. Now I’m awake, I might as well get up and get to work.” 

But he doesn’t. Ren’s arm is too heavy on his side. Hux hides his face against Ren’s chest and dreads the actual start of the day, though none of his projects are going badly. Something is coming: that was what the dream had seemed to say. And still Ren wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“Don’t pay too much attention to dreams,” Ren says after Hux is nearly asleep again.

“Hmm? Why?”

“Snoke. He found me in one.” 

Hux lifts his head, wishing he wasn’t so far from full consciousness. Ren’s grip on him tightens, and he brushes his thumb across the back of Hux’s neck. Hux pushes his legs against Ren’s under the blankets. They can never seem to get close enough, not even physically. Ren would never admit it, but Hux knows he feels the same. It’s why Ren picks him up and carries him around needlessly, from time to time. 

“Is there anything else like Snoke?” Hux asks. “In the galaxy, I mean.” 

“I don’t know,” Ren says. “I don’t have-- No one ever told me the truth. About any of it.” 

“I know,” Hux says, speaking more of his own experience. He was lied to about his potential for so long. Without Rae, he would have been a trapped creature at best, the way that Ren was under Snoke. “But you destroyed everyone who lied to you,” Hux says. He reaches up to cup his hand around Ren’s neck. Ren’s pulse is quick against his palm. 

“They left me no choice,” Ren says. “I would have been loyal to them, if they hadn’t been out to hurt me all along.” 

Hux pulls his hand back down, curling it into a fist against Ren’s chest. He feels ashamed of himself, then furious at Ren for manipulating him again, as usual. As if Hux had no reason to want to hurt Ren, in retaliation for the pain Ren had already inflicted on him. As if he was ever the one holding the cards. 

“If there was anything else like him,” Ren says, “I’d kill it, too.” 

“Him.”

“Snoke.” 

Or Skywalker. Ren doesn’t say it, but Hux can feel him thinking it, through the bond. There’s a particular stab of rage kissed by fear that surges into Ren at any thought of his first master. 

Hux is too untethered by a combination of exhaustion and comfort to continue this conversation without saying things he’ll regret in the morning. He kisses Ren’s jaw and settles down for sleep. 

“Do you believe that,” Ren asks.

This question comes out so quietly, and after so much time has passed, that he must have only asked it because he assumes Hux is asleep.

Hux does him the favor of pretending that he is. Ren won’t be able to sense the truth unless he’s looking for it. Their Force bond is always contented to the point of obscurity when they’re this close in the private of their room, as if it only requires them to be pressed together in the dark, nothing more. 

**

Things go as planned for their first few months on Duron, aside from Hux’s increasing restless need to anticipate something going awry. He feels cooped up and jittery in the way that some people get on long periods of ship-bound life. There is plenty of work to distract him until his recreation hours, when he struggles not to mention to Ren that he has a bad feeling about this place that Ren named after his fallen friend, because perhaps he would have this same feeling about any place Ren chose. 

Ren vacillates between taking childish pleasure in their new excess and going into brooding periods of self-deprivation, taking sojourns into the canyon with several Knights for days at a time. On the first night he spends down in the kyber caves, Hux accepts his explanation that it’s for experimental purposes, to test the limits of his exposure to the power under their feet. Ren of course doesn’t heed Hux’s words of caution about overestimating his own mastery of the crystals’ influence. Hux never expected him to and knew he was wasting his breath. Ren returns in a contemplative mood, fucks Hux with a gentleness that makes him blush all the way to his shoulders, and seems to be suffering no ill effects. 

The second time, Hux wants to protest but withholds his objection out of pride, afraid that it will sound as if he’s lonely for Ren’s company in the night, which is too painfully true to confess. 

Their bond feels too quiet after Ren’s second night spent in the caves, as if it’s wounded. Ren is nowhere to be found, even when Hux ventures to the caves himself, making an excuse about infrastructure inspection to the guards. One of these guards on rotation is always a Knight, and today it’s Wyn. She leaves the others without needing to be asked when Hux exits the caves after finding no sign of Ren. 

“Have you all been doing these exposure tests along with him?” Hux asks, trying not to panic outright. He can hold his expression steady easily enough, but with her he’ll have to keep his mind in check as well. 

Wyn studies him in the way that she does when she’s sizing him up. By the time she speaks, he’s guessed what she’ll say. 

“Which exposure tests are you referring to?” 

She’s calm as ever, not completely taken off guard, but Hux senses some measure of alarm in her. She may be the best at reading others; in his experience this seems true. But that must go both ways. Of all the Knights, she’s always felt the most like a real person.

“Ren has been sleeping in the kyber caves,” Hux says, stepping closer. “He says it in the service of some kind of experiment, but he seems-- Something’s off, these past few days. What have you sensed?”

“Our master has perhaps overextended himself.” 

Hux had expected her to be cagey as well, or at least vague. The concern in her eyes chills him. It’s unlike her to reveal anything but faint amusement with his questions. 

“Might this have originated from your trip back to the ship to speak with the Navigators?” Hux asks. It’s a theory he’s been somewhat afraid to entertain. 

Wyn frowns now and gives a single shake of her head. “Why would you think so?” 

“Just a feeling. Never mind. Where is Ren now?”

“In the canyons. Shall I summon the Knights to retrieve him?”

“What’s he doing alone in the canyons?” Hux asks, nearing a shout. He shakes his head, knowing an answer is not forthcoming anyway. “Never mind -- Yes. Get him back here. I have a bad feeling.” He turns from her and tries to collect himself, disliking this statement. But the Force bond means paying attention to feelings is not without merit. 

He has too much important business to conduct to spend the whole day fretting over Ren’s latest drama. His refusal to give it much thought is moot, however, in light of the Force bond. It keeps pushing his mind back to Ren’s whereabouts, Ren’s mental state, the sense that some kind of gap has opened between them and that this planet itself is behind it. He’s distracted enough that he calls one of his reporting lieutenants by the wrong name, which requires an apology, which makes Hux newly furious with Ren. Sincerely apologizing is one of his least favorite calls to duty. 

When there’s no word from the Knights by mid-day, he detours to the private residence, where Farnik is scheduled to be on guard duty. Even when the Supreme Leader and Grand Marshal are not present, it makes sense to have someone watching the space. Hux shares Ren’s concern that this is too limiting a task for such powerful individuals, but the Knights haven’t complained yet. They have their master’s orders and they follow them to the letter. 

“Where is he?” Hux asks when he’s face to face with Farnik’s mask. 

“Our master is recovering,” Farnik says.

Hux doesn’t like his tone. Farnik is low on his list of preference when it comes to interacting with the Knights.

“Recovering from what?” There’s no point in hiding the contempt in his tone. “Where?” 

“In our care. He has developed an unknown illness. We are tending to him.” 

“No,” Hux says, abruptly and without consideration. “That’s not acceptable. I demand to be taken to him at once. Does he need medical attention? What are his symptoms?”

“Physical weakness. Slowness to respond to questions.” 

“He needs medical attention!” Now Hux is shouting. He doesn’t care. This place is cursed: he knew it. Ren would only ever choose a cursed, poisonous planet for their very expensive residence. Now they’ve made all this investment in infrastructure, and for what? If even Ren is succumbing to exposure to the crystals, everyone is doomed. 

“The situation is not so dire as you think,” Farnik says. He dares to almost sound amused, maybe because Hux is pressing into his space as if he would have any hope of even beginning a physical confrontation with one of the Knights. “We are handling it. It is in our area, so to speak.” 

“I want to speak to Wyn,” Hux says. “Immediately. Summon her.” 

“I cannot -- We can’t speak to each other through the Force.” Farnik seems embarrassed to admit this. “Snoke severed our ability to do so. Only our master can collect us.” 

Hux wants to accuse him of lying, though he has some vague recollection of Ren making this claim himself. Suddenly it seems like weeks since he’s even exchanged a few words with Ren. 

“Where is Ren now?”

“He’s asked us not to tell you.”

“Why.” 

“He did not share his reasoning with us.” 

Hux backs away from Farnik and attempts to calm himself. He can feel it now, in the bond: Ren’s resistance to Hux’s attempts to locate him. The sensation of seeking him has become instinctual, and there’s a pressure against it now, an almost physical awareness of Ren rejecting him. 

“Fine, then,” Hux says, sneering at Farnik. “Let him suffer.” 

He means it, for the first several hours. He eats his dinner alone. The bond continues to feel like a closed passageway that provides minor discomfort, like an out-of-reach itch. He’s grinding his teeth by the time he’s preparing to get in bed, knowing he won’t sleep. 

Wyn is scheduled for this rest cycle guard duty. Hux resists the temptation to go to her and demand answers. If Ren doesn’t want his help, he won’t get it. He would only tell Hux that he doesn’t understand, that it can’t possibly be explained, when Hux himself has been carefully studying the effects of crystal exposure over the past year. His conclusions haven’t lead to any sort of illness or weakness caused by the crystals; quite the opposite, they continue to inspire bursts of manic productivity in the occasional stormtrooper, who will then be isolated from the exposure to prevent them from working themselves to death. If Ren is doing some form of that via the Force, internally or spiritually, Hux won’t be able to stop him, and the Knights don’t seem keen on stopping it. 

Perhaps they want him dead. 

Hux sits up in bed at the thought, as if it’s a string that’s pulled him upright. His heart rate has picked up and a kind of dread has tightened in his gut. 

He looks around the opulent room, and at the mist-kissed windows. If Ren were overthrown by the Knights, Hux would be disposed of quickly. As much as he resents admitting it, he can’t deny that Ren is his protection, as long as powerful Force users are part of his arsenal. 

“I need to see the Supreme Leader,” he says when he hurries into the exterior corridor, wearing a robe over his pajamas and slippers on his feet. Wyn is on guard, according to schedule, wearing her mask. 

“He doesn’t want you there,” Wyn says. 

“Where? What’s happening to him?” 

“We’re investigating that.” 

“Wonderful, well, while you do that I’d like to have him examined more traditionally.” 

“By medics? No. He doesn’t want that.” 

“I don’t care what he wants. He’s obviously not in his right mind. Why did you all let him sleep in the caves in the first place? I should have forbidden it myself!” 

Wyn betrays no amusement at the sight of Hux getting worked up. She’s unlike Farnik, and unlike the others, too. Hux allows himself the thought that, if there were to be a coup against Ren and himself in turn, Wyn might be their only ally. He knows she’ll sense him thinking so.  

She removes her mask. There’s something harried in her expression, and it’s particularly noticeable in contrast to how placidly she normally stares at Hux, the same expression he’s imagined her maintaining beneath her mask even during battle. 

“I do think he should be brought here,” she says. “To the residence, to rest. But it is not my decision.” 

“Then it’s mine. If he’s incapacitated, I’m in command. Am I not?”

Hux is sincerely asking. He’s not sure the Knights would accept this. Wyn looks uncertain but not offended by the suggestion. 

“If you were,” she says, measuredly, “What would your orders be?”

“To bring him up here to his bed.” And allow medical droids to examine him, but perhaps that can go without saying. “Really, is that so much to ask?”

“His instructions to us were to keep you from doing this.” 

“Why?” Hux’s heart sinks. “He’s imagined some new betrayal? Is he in some kind of paranoid stupor, has he declared me an enemy?” 

“No.” 

“Then why?”

“I believe he doesn’t want you to witness him in a weakened state.” 

“Ha!” Hux feels himself reddening. “Are you joking? I’ve personally wrenched him up from a puddle of his own blood and have seen him pissing himself after Snoke fried him with that--” Hux lifts his hand and waggles his fingers to indicate Force lightning. He’s never heard the proper term for it, if there is one. “Not to mention other indecencies,” he adds, teeth grit. He’s had his cock up Ren’s arse: what bout of illness could be more revealing than that particular intimacy?

“I’ll consult with the others,” Wyn says. “But I must wait until we rotate shifts.” 

Hux opens his mouth to tell her there’s no need, that he won’t be killed if he’s left alone for an hour or so while she goes to fetch Ren, but it’s an untested theory. He hasn’t been anywhere on Duron without the Knights close at hand. 

“Is Ren on his deathbed?” Hux asks. It’s sarcastic, but also a real question. 

“You would be in pain, too, if he were.” 

That feels like a threat, though he doesn’t think it was meant to be. 

“We could go together to retrieve him,” Hux says.

“And leave the residence unguarded?”

Hux groans and relents. The shift change will happen in just three hours. He’ll pass the time while pacing, but at least he’s made some progress. Ren hiding away with his chums while ill is beyond unprofessional. They have a galaxy to run. Things can’t stop and start according to Ren’s pride, especially if the only person he’ll expose his weakness is Hux. Whatever Ren thinks, Hux has seen plenty of that already.

He’s on edge by the time he hears the Knights approaching with Ren, a sudden progression of heavy footsteps in the corridor. He tells himself not to run to the front door and dash out to meet them, but he’s already doing it, and the Knights have probably already characterized his concern as panicked worry, anyway, in their reports to Ren. 

Something drops in his gut before he even lays eyes on Ren: it’s the boundary between them being lifted, the Force bond no longer obscured by Ren’s efforts. Then he does see Ren, and his stomach drops again. 

“Someone get a medic droid at once!” Hux shouts, dashing forward to help them support Ren. He’s limp and staggering, his greasy hair hanging over his face. “How dare you leave him like this! He’s half-dead!” 

“A medical droid won’t be able to help,” Sabin says. “And he’s nowhere near death. This is a Force-bound condition, a sickness of the spirit.” 

“Fuck you it is!” Hux shouts, without thinking. He’s wrenched Ren mostly into his arms, Wyn helping to support him. 

“I’m alright,” Ren mutters. 

“Shut up!” Hux says. “You’re not!” He glares at the Knights while backing toward the front door, clutching Ren and moving him rather ineptly while Wyn continues to help. “Which of you is going to summon the droid? I want my CMO here, too, Doctor Yipp. She’s onboard the _Finalizer_ \-- Scratch that, we’ll go to her, to hell with this planet--” 

“Hux,” Ren says, grasping at him. “No.” 

“Was I asking you?” Hux hears himself sounding unhinged, also overly upset. He surrenders Ren entirely to Wyn and tries to steady his hands at his sides while he watches her help him stumble toward the bedchamber, Ren’s footsteps dragging clumsily alongside hers. When Hux turns back to the remaining Knights, none of them has moved to fetch a droid. 

Fine: Hux will do it himself.  
“Get out,” he says, pointing to the door. “All of you.” 

“We’re concerned for him, too,” Sabin says. There’s condescension in her tone, as if Hux is a hysterical child. “But we all foresee his full recovery. It is simply a storm he must weather. Having us near will help.” 

“Then you can stand out in the fucking hallway,” Hux says, still pointing. “What are a few walls to your profound connection with him.” 

Wyn returns from the bedroom. Sabin seems to look to her for direction, and some silent acknowledgement passes between them. 

“We’ll remain close,” Wyn says. “You should know, he says he’ll destroy any droid that comes near him.” 

“He looks like he’d have trouble destroying a gnat at present, but thanks for the warning.” 

“On the contrary,” Ilar says. “Spells like this can make Force powers unpredictable. Power surges can be dangerous.” 

“Spells like _what_? You’ve experienced this before?”

None of them responds, which seems to say: no. 

“Out with all of you, then,” Hux says. “Keep watch on the situation in your way, and I’ll do so in mine.” 

There’s a moment where he’s not sure if they’ll obey his command or decide they’ve tired of all this and kill him, then Ren. So it seems anticlimactic when they simply march out in silence and allow him to shut the door behind them. Hux isn’t sure why he’s surprised, as this seems to be how his life has turned out: waiting for other shoe to drop, never comfortable but never considered enough of a threat to be finally turned on by whomever he’s watching for signs of attack.

Hux turns and steels himself to enter the bedroom. He’s not here to be Ren’s nursemaid, but someone has got to apply logic to this situation that the Force users apparently only want to treat with theoretical whimsy. 

Ren is sprawled across the bed as dramatically as possible, holding on to the far end of the mattress as if he’s seasick and needs to brace himself on something sturdy. He’s on his stomach, his face hidden. His breathing is reedy and quickened. 

“What have you done to yourself,” Hux asks, discreetly summoning the medic droid with a command typed into his comm. 

“I’m evolving,” Ren says, without lifting his head. 

Hux scoffs. “Into a corpse?”

Ren rearranges himself with some effort, so that he can glare at Hux with one eye that’s partially obscured by his lank hair. 

“True evolution involves a trial. You would know this if you listened to the crystals.” 

“Ah.” Hux wrinkles his nose and resists the urge to look down at his comm when it buzzes, probably with an acknowledgement that the droid is on its way. “I did not realize you’d been conversing with them, Ren.” 

“Because I knew--” Ren loses his breath and writhes. Hux sees him grit his teeth before he presses his face to the mattress again. “I knew how you’d react,” he says, his voice a pained scratch now. “And I’ll smash that droid if it comes in here.” 

“What droid? No, you won’t. What are your symptoms? Your breathing is labored, clearly. What else?” 

“This is a process. Not an illness.” 

“Fantastic. Now let’s get you into a shuttle so you can complete this process away from the planet that’s made you sick.” 

“Physically disconnecting from this planet’s energy would kill me. But maybe that’s what you want.” 

“What energy?” Hux asks, ignoring the bait. He thinks of their Force bond and Ren’s varying, largely inconsistent claims of experiencing physical weakness when they’re separated. “Have you _bonded_ with the kyber?” It seems like the kind of fool thing Ren would do.

Ren shakes his head, face still hidden. “You would think that a person could bond with an inanimate object.” 

“They’re hardly as simple as that, according to you. And now they’ve poisoned you.” 

Hux’s comm vibrates again. The medic droid has arrived on their floor and is requesting entry, with a corresponding note that it is being detained in the corridor by the Knights. 

“I’m not poisoned,” Ren says. “Send that thing away.” 

“What’s the harm in at least letting it examine you?” Hux thinks quickly: “To prove me wrong, if nothing else. Won’t that be satisfying? When it tells me you’re not physically ill? Just spiritually?” 

“The droid would misinterpret this. Keep it away from me. I didn’t even want you involved, but Wyn said you were desperate.” 

Hux hates him. “Desperate to know what the hell was going on! Now I see it’s just you making poor decisions at the expense of your health and refusing to explain your motivations to me as usual.” 

Ren says nothing. For a moment Hux thinks he’s actually managed to win an argument or at least get the last word. Then he notices Ren’s shoulders shaking, and he feels it, too, through the bond: Ren is in pain. 

It isn’t physical pain, at least not in the way that it comes to Hux through their connection. It’s something deeper and actually worse, like a cold realization that miscalculations were made and cannot be corrected. The first dawning acceptance of a failure. 

“Ren,” Hux says. He moves toward the bed, steps measured. “Are you all right? Are you seizing?”

Ren doesn’t respond. Hux turns on his heel and races through their grand rooms, seeing nothing and not understanding his own panic: this is Ren, he’ll be fine. He always is, even while his claims that he will be always sound like lies. 

“Let it through!” Hux shouts when he’s run out into the corridor. None of the Knights seem particularly agitated, and they comply with this command with relative instancy, moving against the walls so the medic droid can roll toward Hux. 

“What symptoms is the Supreme Leader displaying?” the droid asks, its voice an even imitation of human calm even as it races toward the bedroom in Hux’s wake. 

“Extreme fatigue and difficulty breathing,” Hux says. “Due to kyber crystal overexposure, so far as I can tell.” 

Hux catches himself in the bedroom doorway, prepared to find Ren either convulsing in respiratory distress or sitting up with a smirk, ready to declare some trick on Hux successfully played. Ren is still on the bed, still breathing but not otherwise moving. The gloom that Hux felt before persists and feels stronger the closer he draws to Ren. 

“Permission to diagnose?” the medic droid says, moving to the side of the bed.

Hux has only opened his mouth to grant said permission when the droid’s neck joint sparks violently, its head slumping to the side before it powers off completely, fried.

“Ren!” Hux says, teeth grit. 

“No droids,” Ren says. He sounds almost tearful, and he’s curled in on himself upon the bed, one fist gripped very tightly in the sheets. 

“What is happening to you?” Hux asks, shouting. “And why won’t you allow me to assist?” 

“You can. You can, Hux. Just not with that thing.” 

Hux wheels the droid out of the room while smoke wafts from his snapped neck joint. These medic droids are expensive, and this one has a specific security clearance mechanism that Hux programmed himself. It can likely be repaired; but he’ll have to do it himself and it will be time-consuming. He leaves it out in the sitting room and attempts to reconfigure his plan to deal with Ren on his way back to the bedroom. 

“All right,” Hux says when he enters. Ren is still rolled onto his side, facing away from the door. His right shoulder is twitching as if he’s being stabbed gently with a electro rod. “How can I help?”

“Come here.” 

Hux groans, but he’s glad for the invitation. If the medic droid won’t be allowed to do so, at least he can examine Ren under the guise of giving comfort. He had basic medical training at the Academy, though admittedly not in the treatment of exposure to mystical alien crystals. 

“Why did you go down there to sleep in the first place?” Hux asks. He approaches the bed, trying to decide where to sit. In just a few days, Ren has managed to make himself seem dangerous again. 

“I was called,” Ren says. 

“By the crystals?” 

“By the Force. Sit down. I’m not contagious.” 

Hux sniffs doubtfully. Ren is the most contagious person he’s ever met, and he needn’t be ill in order to infect those around him. Despite this, as ever, he sits at Ren’s side and allows Ren to weakly grope for his knee. 

“You smell like the caves,” Hux says, politely. Ren also smells like a person who hasn’t washed in several very sweaty days. Hux normally likes Ren’s unwashed scent, to a point. This is extreme. 

“You could bathe me,” Ren says.

Hux sneers down at him, surprised to find Ren isn’t smirking and doesn’t have the faintest light of mockery in his eyes. He’s pathetic, like this. He’ll put himself in his own grave just out of unwillingness to admit he doesn’t know what he’s doing all the time, or perhaps often.

Although, actually: he did admit as much, in the still of night, not so long ago. Perhaps he’d expected more gratitude or amazement from Hux in response.

“Your uncharitable thoughts toward me will only prolong this process,” Ren says. 

“What happens at the end of this process.” Hux will make no promises about or apologies for his thoughts, even if Ren is on a literal deathbed. 

“Strength,” Ren says. “Clarity. Oneness with our new home.” 

“Oh, oneness,” Hux says, derisive. He’s not even sure what he means. He’s not slept properly in several cycles.  

“You ask me questions,” Ren says, his voice choking away a bit more with every word. “And then. You mock my answers.” 

“Don’t speak,” Hux says, more gently than he intended to. He sweeps Ren’s hair away from his face and is alarmed anew at his pallor. “Save your energy. Do you really want my help with getting cleaned up?” 

Ren doesn’t respond, but something about his slumped posture seems to say: yes, please. 

“Can you walk?” Hux asks, and only after he’s asked this does he really consider the implications of Ren becoming seriously ill. He puts them out of his mind, not wanting Ren to suspect forthcoming betrayal. The potential for treason isn’t at the forefront of Hux’s concerns, anyway. It was more the realization that, at some point in the past, this would have set off scheming. Now he feels too tired to bother. Or maybe it’s not merely exhaustion. For whatever reason, he would rather see Ren to bed and lie down beside him than incapacitate him further. 

Ren answers the question about his mobility by hoisting himself off the bed: slowly, painfully. His arms are shaking. Hux keeps close and studies Ren’s face, as if the cure for this might be etched there like a scar. He’ll wait until Ren falls asleep to try again with a medic droid diagnosis. The trouble is that he doesn’t have a backup on hand that has the same security protections that the one Ren broke had, and also Ren has a particular talent for wrenching himself from sleep at the first sign of trouble. 

He’ll fix the droid later, regardless. He’ll have to do that while Ren sleeps, too. For now he activates the faucet on the massive tub in their fresher and lowers the overhead lights to a more soothing setting. 

“Let me,” Hux says when Ren struggles to even undress himself. “Why are you trembling?” Removing Ren’s tunic unleashes a more intense odor of unwashed illness; Hux feels himself pulling a face. “Are you cold?” he asks. He touches Ren’s cheek, then his forehead. “Can I at least check your temperature?” 

“No. It’s normal.” 

Hux is surprised to find that this at least feels true: though clammy, Ren is neither chilled nor overheated. 

However: “Nothing about this is normal, Ren.” 

“I meant my body temperature.” 

“I know what you meant. Get in, it’s warm enough.” 

The design of this tub and most of the other fresher details were selected by Ren. He is the one who is obsessed with grooming rituals, as if there is something spiritual inherent in them, whereas Hux has only ever found comfort in them as a source of solitude, once that was possible. Everything is particularly according to Ren’s taste, in here: simple lines and dark colors but extravagant dimensions. Ren had to have a bathing tub large enough to fit three of him. Hux has had nightmares, already, about walking in here and finding Ren in the bath along with some or all of the Knights, who look up at Hux in synchronized accusation from behind their masks. 

“How long do you expect this to last?” Hux asks when he rubs soap across Ren’s back. It seems almost like something one of the Knights should do, though he can’t reason out why. It’s not as if he’s not accustomed to showing Ren something resembling tenderness, not as if can deny he’s missed Ren’s presence in their bed these past nights. 

“Don’t know,” Ren says. “It’s a puzzle. I hate puzzles.”

“I love them,” Hux says, too eagerly. He flushes and concentrates on washing Ren, then flushes more deeply when he considers what he’s doing, how he’s kneeling on the floor for Ren in a whole new way, after all this time. “What’s the central problem you’re trying to solve? The nature of the puzzle, I mean. Maybe I can help.” 

“There’s no-- It doesn’t work like that. It’s not spelled out. The Force doesn’t have a language that I can repeat to you.” 

Ren’s voice sounds terrible. Hux shushes him, less annoyed by these dismissals than he normally is. He wets Ren’s hair and washes it for him while Ren sits slumped and shivering. It’s odd, how strong he manages to look while in this state. He hasn’t lost any weight, at least. 

“Let me propose something,” Hux says. “And don’t say anything in response. You shouldn’t talk right now, just listen and consider what I’m about to suggest.” 

Ren says nothing, which is close enough to agreement. 

“We have this bond, as you call it,” Hux says. “You and I. This thing forged in the Force. By accident, but I’ve felt it. I know it’s real. And still you won’t talk to me about anything meaningful of this nature. Keep quiet,” Hux says when Ren turns and opens his mouth, wet hair hanging over his face. “I’m not finished.” 

“You’re never finished,” Ren says, his voice a sad husk. “Torturing me.” 

“As if you don’t like getting it as good as you give. No, listen. Might these crystals or this energy or whatever’s down there be asking you to throw me a bone? Connected as we are, by this bond? Might you at least try that, if it’s going to steal your strength from you? What have you got to lose, other than being frustrated by my presumed misunderstanding of everything you say?” 

Ren makes no response but seems to be thinking. His brow is furrowed when Hux sweeps the clean, wet hair away from it. 

“What do you want to know?” he finally asks when Hux is washing his face with a cloth, carefully moving over the texture of the scar. Ren’s voice is reduced now to a whisper, which makes him sound afraid of whatever Hux will ask. 

Hux felt so composed in delivering his proposal, but suddenly he can’t think of a single question. Ren sniffs as if he expected as much and is disappointed. 

“What would you do with the girl if you found her,” Hux asks. 

Ren looks up at him. There’s something fearful in his eyes, or at least shy, as if he’s been caught.

“I’ll kill them all,” he says, very unconvincingly. 

“Even your mother?”

Ren looks down at the surface of the water again. Under the low lighting, it looks like a black pool, except where the shape of him shows through and reveals its clarity. 

“Maybe not her,” he says. “I would give her the opportunity to survey my work, what we’ve done to maintain galactic order.” 

Hux withholds a groan. They both know how that would go. “There’s something about the navigators that you’re not telling me,” he says. “Isn’t there?”

“Yes.” 

“Well?” 

Ren is staring down at the water, where his soft cock bobs between his thighs. He’s not really looking at anything, but Hux glances again at Ren’s dick and feels a kind of nostalgic pang. Then he feels incredibly weak, but something in their bond seems to answer this response to his longing for Ren’s body, and when he looks up again he sees Ren’s vulnerability for what feels like the first time. It’s as if Hux never seriously considered that Ren is everything he is, uniquely powerful and now the almost uncontested ruler of the galaxy, but also a man. All along he’s been that, too.

“They told me I’ve already found what I sought,” Ren says. “When I pressed them for the location of the Resistance.” 

“Meaning what?” Hux thinks of spies, then of enemies in general: perhaps they meant him, or maybe Ren just thinks so. He looks so defeated, broken somehow. 

“I don’t know,” Ren says. “They seemed to pity me when I sought an explanation.”

“Are you frightened of them.” 

Hux holds Ren’s stare, trying to put it all in his eyes: that this isn’t a judgment or a criticism or something that will be held against Ren if he finally answers honestly. Hux isn’t sure he knows how to make himself look that way, but he wants it all to be true, at present. 

“They came from the same place Snoke did,” Ren says. He’s gripping the side of the tub now, his other hand clenched in a fist over his knee in the water. 

Therefore: yes. Hux nods and touches Ren’s cheek. Ren is shaking like the effort of holding himself upright in the tub is taking all the energy he has. For once, at last, Hux understands how hard it is for him to talk about any of this. It’s as if discussion of this nature physically strips something away from him, the way that even saying Skywalker’s name pummels him from within. Snoke came to him very young; Hux has learned that much over the years, through insinuation that makes him feel a kind of strange and tender embarrassment for Ren. That timing must have always made the Force feel like a curse more than a blessing, especially in hindsight, when he killed Snoke so easily after suffering under him for so long. 

“Come on,” Hux says, standing to get a towel. “You need some real rest.” 

Perhaps the navigators meant the crystals, Hux thinks. Finding them was surely more significant for the Order’s continued success than squashing some pathetic if well-concealed rebel faction that remains unfound. He goes over this and other possibilities while lying beside Ren in bed, waiting for him to sink into a sleep deep enough so that Hux can creep into the other room and work on repairing the medic droid. But perhaps he won’t: he believes Ren now, that this is something that has befallen his spirit, as ridiculous as the concept remains. Hux can’t deny that ridiculous drama follows Ren around like a birthright. 

Hux sleeps, too, before he can decide what to do next. Ren’s energy seems to join with his and pull him under, which should scare him. 

He’s not afraid, even when he seems to wander awake through dreams that feel like living things, like creatures that surround him. Ren is moving just ahead of him in most of them, out of reach but close enough to make Hux feel like they are experiencing whatever this is together, though their eyes never meet. In the dreams, the living Force moves around them, balanced into a thing that is as much of a caress as a threat. Like Ren himself, Hux thinks.

“Would you still send me away?” he shouts when they’re walking through a field of sound and color that obscures Ren from view like heavy rain, though he’s just a few paces ahead, weathering the worst of it so that it flows mostly around Hux. “If you could find them?” Hux persists, though he knows Ren will pretend not to hear him. “Would you? In exchange for them, would you lose me?”

As he predicted, Ren hears this over the roar of the storm but says nothing.

When Hux wakes, the sun is setting. The clouds are thinner than usual, which seems like cause for concern, as if they’re connected to Ren’s condition, and why not? It makes as much sense as anything else. Hux puts his hand on Ren’s forehead while Ren goes on sleeping, his nose making a sad little whistling sound with each exhalation. He’s not wrong about Hux’s inability to really listen to any explanation given about the Force. But the information about the navigators is useful. They aren’t looking for the Resistance; it’s of no interest to them. If the rebels are to be found, Hux and Ren will have to do it themselves. Some sacrifice will be involved, and in the best case scenario, the idea of holding even a few of those people captive here is ruinous. It would be like a pebble just big enough to trip them out of their stride and bring everything crashing down.

“Ren,” Hux says, nudging his shoulder. He just needs to make sure Ren can still achieve consciousness. Then he’ll let him go on sleeping and will return to all the work that awaits. He should give the Knights a report, too, though they’re probably well aware of all that’s going on within these walls, as ever. 

Hux gives Ren a firmer shake. Normally he’s easy to rouse. 

“Ren,” he says again, more loudly. “Wake up. You should eat something, or at least have some water.” 

Hux’s heart begins to pound when he realizes he’s alone. Ren can’t hear him. Despite his physical presence, Ren has gone somewhere. He went there in those dreams, and Hux let him-- He just walked behind Ren, passively, making no demands, not even trying. Just following like a fool while all that energy blasted against Ren, who shielded him from it. 

Ren, who was found by Snoke in a dream. 

“Ren!” Hux gets up onto his knees and turns as if to call the Knights in, but won’t they have sensed the danger already? Did they know this was coming, are they glad? Would they even come to Ren’s aid?

Ren is limp on his back, still breathing but unresponsive when Hux slaps him. Hux opens his mouth to call out for someone, but who would come? What could the Knights do, if they haven’t dashed into the room in a panic already? 

“Stop it!” Hux shouts in Ren’s impassive face. “Don’t do this! Come back!” 

Ren opens his eyes. Hux is relieved, until he sees the guilt there. 

Hux sits back, horrified. He feels the color drain from his face, and the tears that came burning into the corners of his eyes dry up as if incinerated by rage. Ren sits up on his elbows, sheepish. 

“You were pretending,” Hux says. He’s backing across the bed, and there’s so much of it, it feels as if he’ll never reach the edge and be free. “That was, you-- You were testing me.” 

“Hux--”

“That’s why you refused the droid, that’s why the Knights let me yank you in here at all. That was the idea, to see what I would do.” 

When he does reach the end of the mattress he’s not prepared, somehow still not expecting every new drop. He tumbles backward off the bed in a surely comical fashion and braces himself to land. Ren catches him with the Force before he can hit the ground, then lowers him gently. 

“Don’t!” Hux shouts, snarling at Ren when he peeks over the side of the bed. “Pitiless monster! Don’t touch me! Next time let me fall to my death, just keep your vile tentacles off of me!” 

“Hux. I’m sorry.”

“No!”

“I realize-- Now. I feel foolish, it. Was misguided--” 

Hux is still on the floor, scrambling backward when Ren swings his legs over the side of the bed. Ren is not shaking now, not sick, not anything real. Ren stands, then sits again when he seems to dislike the feeling of towering over Hux. 

“I’m sorry,” Ren says again. “I had to know. It was the last hurdle. I know what it feels like to be lied to, but it wasn’t meant to be a lie, not entirely--” 

“You wanted me humiliated further? You needed that, even now?”

“No!” There’s a flash of rage in Ren’s eyes, as if he has any right. “You lied to me first! You made me-- The kidnapping--”

“That was years ago now!” 

“I had to know you’d do the same. If I was-- Hurt. If I needed you.” 

“No. No, no, you-- You expected me to put a pillow over your face. And they were all in on it?” Hux swings his arm in the direction of the corridor, indicating the Knights. 

Ren looks down at his feet, bare on the cool marble floor. He’s naked, the bedsheets draped across his lap. 

“It was an experiment,” Ren says. “I’m sorry I did it. It’s true, I didn’t think. I didn’t think you would be so-- That you would--”

He can’t even say it. An uncomfortable pity mixes with Hux’s disgust. 

“Now we can move forward,” Ren says. His eyes are shining when he looks up at Hux again, begging. “Because now we both know.” 

“I don’t know anything about you,” Hux says, shaking his head. 

“Don’t say that.” 

“Yes, you’re right. I do know one thing. You don’t even know where to start at being a person, rather than some-- Symbol, or. Grotesque idea.” 

Hux expects this to set Ren off, to shut things down and send him storming away to mourn another failure. Instead, Ren’s eyes light up.

“Then this is where I start,” he says. “With you.” 

“Start? _Start_ , Ren? We’ve been at this for two years! It’s just round and round in circles, over and over!” 

“Because we weren’t doing it right. Not before. But just now, you were-- When you thought I wouldn’t wake up--” 

“Fuck you! You destroyed an entire planet for me before we’d ever shared a bed!” 

Hux has lost control of his own thought process, the progress of this argument, everything. He turns over onto his hands and knees and rises to his feet with his back to Ren, slowly. 

“Come here,” Ren says. 

“No.” Hux stands in place, trying to parse why he feels so shattered. It’s not even this most recent lie, or his embarrassment at panicking when he thought Ren might die. It’s something else.

“You felt it.” Ren stands from the bed but wisely doesn’t come any closer. 

“Felt what.” 

“That I was in pain when I came back from sleeping in the caves.” 

“Ren, you’re always in pain. You’d fall to pieces without it.” 

Ren closes the space between them in two paces, grabs Hux’s shoulders and turns him around. Hux stares up at him, unimpressed. 

“I was suffering because of the lie,” Ren says. “Our bond was punishing me for being a coward. I already knew this was not the way I should go about-- Getting confirmation.” 

Hux doesn’t dare ask: confirmation of what. He knows precisely, and that he’s given it, and that he can’t get it back. 

“But I can’t just ask you things,” Ren says, voice sharpening. “How could I know if you’d ever stopped lying? I thought you hated me.” 

“I do!” 

It just feels like another confession, the one he already gave when Ren lay there playing dead like an idiot child while Hux shouted at him to come back. Always the bigger idiot for playing the child’s games, wittingly or not. 

“I’m sorry,” Ren says, so softly that Hux is embarrassed for him. Ren moves closer: cautious, still begging with his eyes. “Sorry, Hux. I’m sorry.” 

He’s apologizing for more than one transgression, Hux realizes. It’s so little, so late. Hux should push him away. 

He looks over Ren’s shoulder, tired of being expected to hold his begging, bottomlessly needful gaze. The sunset outside is glorious, unlike anything they’ve seen on this planet thus far. The clouds disperse so rarely, and never at this time of day. Hux exhales when Ren puts his hands on his waist. Ren is terrified: Hux can feel it. But what does he think Hux can do to him now? Where would he go, if he turned away?

“We’ve got to stop this or we’ll destroy everything we’ve built,” Hux says. “It’s a waste of energy, all the pretending.”

“I know.” Ren’s eyes fill up with something: hope, desperation? Hux could crush him now, if he wanted to. “And you’re right, about me. About not knowing how to be, uh. A person, anymore. Or maybe I never knew. You make me want to be one.” 

“Well, you’re off to a horrible start.” 

“Show me, then.” 

Hux looks down at Ren, taking in the full expanse of his nakedness. Hux is wearing his little shorts and an old tank that was once sharp black, now more greyish. In six hours they’re both expected at an important expense allocation meeting. If it goes as usual, Ren will seem to be ignoring everyone’s input until he makes some sweeping statement at the conclusion and breezes away while Hux carefully notes everyone’s reactions and placates or chastises as necessary. 

“Was it true about the navigators?” Hux asks. “That they said you’d already found what you seek?”

“Yes.” 

“They must mean the crystals.” 

“Mhmm.” 

“But what about the rest? Where do we go from here?”

To bed, Ren thinks. Hux isn’t sure if he was meant to hear that. He has to concede that it is the one place in the galaxy where Ren already knows how to behave like a human, mostly. 

“Your kidnapping idea could still work,” Hux says, testing him now. “If we’re really left to our own devices in finding the--” 

“No,” Ren says. 

“Well, what better ideas have we got?”

“We wait for them to come to us. They will, in time.” 

“Yes, with an army!” 

“What army could we defeat us, if we strengthen our foundation? Rather than splitting it apart.” 

Hux rolls his eyes. Now is not the time. He does want to go to bed, wants to lie on his back and feel the evidence of Ren’s strength flooding into him, but that’s what they’ve always done in the past. 

“Tell me about your friend,” he says instead. “The one this place is named for.” 

There’s a moment where he thinks Ren will deny him this. Something passes over Ren’s face: a shadow of possessiveness, that old impulse to say that his pain belongs to him alone. He does cherish it above all things. 

“He was a student of Luke’s,” Ren says. “He thought he understood me, but he didn’t. I used him to get the others to follow me, and Snoke killed him to punish me. He did it to show me that I was still not so ruthless as I pretended to be. That I could still be hurt.” 

Already Hux is taken aback. This is the first time he’s heard Ren call Skywalker by his first name. 

“Let’s sit,” Hux says, taking Ren’s hand. “I want to hear all of it.” 

So they do go to bed, but only to lean against each other and speak with anxious, quiet urgency about matters too long concealed while the sun disappears outside. Hux hears his comm pinging, but none of the alerts are emergency-level. Ren talks about Duro, who was the kind of sweet fool that Ren never could have loved except when he was gone, as a regret. Hux confesses that he was gentle during Ren’s “illness” because Brendol had always been so cruel in response to any sickness that befell him as a boy. As if Hux had wanted to feel weaker and smaller than usual and deserved punishment for it. 

“I remember sensing that you’d killed him,” Ren says. “It changed my view of you significantly.” 

“I’m assuming it was an improvement on the initial evaluation.” 

“Of course.” 

Hux grins in the dark, his face pressed to Ren’s shoulder. They’ll need to get up and prepare for their meeting soon, and it would also be advisable to eat something. He shouldn’t ask any more questions, though he doesn’t have any reason to think that it could be like this from now on, that this isn’t just another respite that will keep him going until the next disaster. 

“What would you have done if I hadn’t reacted as I did to your illness?” Hux asks. It’s unwise question for many reasons, but he can’t rescind it now and doesn’t regret it yet. 

“I’d have gone on as before,” Ren says, as if the answer is easy. His cheek rests on top of Hux’s head, and his hand is curled in a loose fist over Hux’s belly, his thumb moving idly there. “Always afraid you’d turn on me.” 

“And now you’re sure I won’t? Just because I washed your hair when you had the Force flu?”

“It wasn’t that.” 

“What was it, Ren.” 

This, Ren doesn’t need to say. It’s this, just here, right now. 

“We should get up and prepare for the day,” Hux says, alarmed by how much he’d rather stay here. He should hate Ren more than ever for that stunt. But the ability to hate him at all has been worn thin by time, and there is something about Ren that he understands at the root of such a stupid game. Something he has known too well: _if I were dying, would he care_.

“Maybe we are preparing for the day,” Ren says. “Right here, like this.”

“Oh, please,” Hux says, but he waits a little longer to pull away from the warmth of this respite, then just a little while more. 

 

 

**

**Author's Note:**

> Quote in the summary is from the Liz Phair song "Johnny Feelgood."


End file.
